Photo by Gwen Tinnefeldt

With Australian duo Baby Smith set to release their forthcoming debut LP Lately, Love Is Dead on July 10th, the pair have dropped their latest single ‘Limoncello River’.

A breezy and charming indie pop piece, ‘Limoncello River’ has a fairy tale-like quality to it, with the production being slightly whimsical and infectiously upbeat. It’s quite an enjoyable and fun listen, breathing total life with every listen.

Regarding the single, Baby Smith stated:

“Lyrically, we were playing with the an idea of creating an oddity in the feeling of the song. We wanted things to be not quite sitting right, almost being nonsensical. We wanted to create a sense of friction by mixing the mundane with something more surreal. It was partly inspired by one of our closest friends going through a really intense period, dealing with serious health issues whilst also becoming a father. It felt like the best of times and the worst of times colliding. We kept coming back to this paradox and wanted to create a bit of a dizzying emotion in the lyrics. We ended up in a whimsical, off-kilter place with the song. Lines like “On time waiting round for hours” or “Cemetery winters, doctors singing seaside blues” give us this weird almost disorientating feeling as if something is a bit off. There are little encoded messages in the lyrics that are a nod to things from our lives that we thought would be cool to throw in, kinda secrets in plain sight.

We’ve been playing this one live for a while now and we have been getting a really nice response from it. The ending in particular is a lot of fun for us to play. We really wanted to capture this big coda on record, but with so many ideas and melodies, finding the right balance was a challenge. We ended up weaving different motifs in and out, which took some work to get right without overdoing it. We ended up packed in as much as we could and even brought in some friends to add strings, flute, and tuba which was a fun to record.”