Babal "Running In The Gutter"

Country: UK
Genre(s): Progressive Rock
Label: Fruits de Mer Records
Format: CD,digital,vinyl
Release date: August 8, 2025
Tracklist

1. One Big Family (5:19) 

2. The Best Restaurants (8:55) 

3. The World That We Know (8:05) 

4. Cake Music (7:36) 

5. We Shall Be Fables (5:38) 

6. Running In The Gutter (9:07) 

Total Time 44:40

Credits

Karen Langley – vocals, arrangements

Rob Williams – guitar, guitar synth, programming

Jon Sharp – drums

    With

Paul Smith – acoustic bass

Chris Gill - bass 

Description/Reviews:

BABAL have come up with a blend of songs that illustrate the band’s improvisational skills, still retaining musical ideas that weave poetry and dynamic vocals that are at the band’s core.

 Opening track “One Big Family” is a full-on attack on social media; the rise of the biggest brain-washing experiment in history; “eye sockets sore, mind in chaos, thoughts flying round, like a bird in a cage, manic with facts and terrible rage! Nowhere to go, I can’t turn the page!”.

“The Best Restaurants” is a sharp take on poverty consciousness and opposing huge wealth, and a vain hope that religions may save us, but very probably not. ”All I saw was a crowd of starving souls, chewing at their wishes”.

“The World that we Know” is a plea for the World to wake up to the real possibility of extinction, “I wanna green world! I wanna green world! I want it to smell good; I don’t want it to stink like it does at the moment! Open your arms and let it in!”.

“Cake Music” is a satire on the virtues of neo-liberalism, “recycle now and do your bit! Be a match when the fires are lit; move a little closer to the cholera pit!”

“We Shall Be Fables” is a song that lulls the listener, yet reminds us ultimately of our mortality (one of Karen’s recurring lyrical themes), “life is eating us up, we shall be Fables, when the noon-tide beckons and the reaper reckons; we shall be Fables”

Title track, “Running in the Gutter” is a love song, poignant yet hopeful that love can still make the difference in all our lives; “you won’t applaud, it has a drive, it’s not a lot till love arrives! Love is not a number, it lives, it dies, running in the gutter, it doesn’t strive”. We can all get there, no matter how far down in the gutter we are.

Media/Samples
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