When discovering a new band, where do you start? With the music? Name? Presence in the scene? Well, when it comes to Best Baby, a Brooklyn-based garage rock/punk quartet, you start with performing. Best Baby has been playing in the New York scene in some impressive locations, such as The Knitting Factory. Their name comes from guitarist Marissa Mazzotta’s childhood, when her mother used to enter her in pageant shows and in 1993, Mazzotta was named Rhode Island’s Best Baby. The rock band’s name has its own set of problems, however.
There’s no getting around it: it’s almost impossible to find out information about Best Baby. Not that they have made it difficult to find their music (it’s available on both YouTube and Spotify), but just because their name brings up results for toddler care instead of an indie rock band. But that being said, Best Baby has just dropped the first single for their first full length album, called “Get Mine.”
“Get Mine” starts with an intriguing echoing guitar, like you’re sitting in the middle of a concrete room. The guitars are reminiscent first of an 80s style, but then transfers to a sound more akin to the alt rock band Liily – particularly in their song “Sold.” I actually really like Liily, which immediately endears Best Baby to me. It has the somber, solitary feeling of alt rock that can make great character music down pat.
The lyrics for the bridge are rather asinine, but like almost all bridges is meant to be a restating of the thesis of the song presented in the chorus.
“Gonna get mine,
I’m gonna get mine, I’m gonna.”
The best lyrical formatting, in my opinion, is when the chorus states the thesis and echoes the title of the song (this can also take place in the bridge), and the verses support the thesis.
“I can be the only one,
Things are pretty pointless,
Walking on a tightrope.”
In the case of “Get Mine,” it’s an expression of both disenchanted views on the world but also a determination to make it on your own – there’s a sort of longing presence in Claire Lorenzo’s vocals that really helps sell the theme of the song. With lyrics about Wall Street fat cats and “what makes you think you deserve anything?” wailed into a mic, almost blending in with the guitars as if Lorenzo is being swallowed up into the capitalist sinkhole.
All of this being said, I think that “Get Mine” is a fantastic song – the thesis is tight and brings together a lonely, angry view that many millennials and older Gen Zers are familiar with. However, I will put out a prayer to Best Baby: it is a shame that your music is getting lost among the search results and supplanted by Amazon’s listing for “Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense” and Dumbo’s most famous song “Baby Mine.” It’s just wrong that your band is being so overshadowed by these unrelated properties, so I sincerely hope that someday in the future I can look up your band and find you as the first a foremost result online. You deserve it.
