Blair Kelly rewards Baby Dee goes down to Amsterdam with 4.5 stars out of 5
…this album is song after song of sheer brilliance encapsulated in Baby Dee’s vibrant and quirky stage persona. Truly unusual and beautiful.
Ben Graham gives Baby Dee goes down to Amsterdam 4 out of 5 pigeons
There’s a slippery quality to the music of Baby Dee that’s a joy to behold. This live set from Amsterdam’s Bimhuis is the perfect introduction to an artist who deserves to be far more widely celebrated, serving as a surrogate greatest hits collection, as well as an incentive to catch her in the flesh on her current UK and European tour. […] If you only buy one Baby Dee album, buy this (and then buy Safe inside the Day).
Was Ist Das reviews Baby Dee goes down to Amsterdam
The performance alone elevates this album above fan-filling merchandise into an essential album for your collection. You could easily use this album to introduce people to Baby Dee’s music and make them fans. Beautiful, witty, strange, wonderful and sad, you would be well advised to check this one out.
Ben Hewitt reviews Baby Dee goes down to Amsterdam
Capping proceedings with an ode to incontinence (‘The Song Of Self-Acceptance’) could verge on whimsy, but Dee could bring cheer to the sleaziest of backstreets.
Jan Willem Broek reviews Baby Dee goes down to Amsterdam
The 20 songs that are presented here form a splendid cross-section of her work, and are all performed in unparalleled quality. It makes us Dutch a little proud to see her produce a Dutch-coloured album. […] Overall this is a wonderfull registration of an impressive and foremost moving performance.
Ole Rosenstand Svidt gives Aarhus concert 5 stars
…my main impression of her concert at the Atlas on Friday night was that this was the performance of a very talented singer, songwriter and instrumentalist with four excellent musicians. The music was partly bizarre, aggressive, theatrical, humorous, satirical, vulgar, coarse and obscene – but most of the time primarily beautiful.
Baby Dee meets the pope
Rembember how Baby Dee invited the pope to her Berlin concert? Guess what happened next:
During his German tour, the Pope visited the headquarters of hedonism: the Berlin dance club “Berghain”
Baby Dee radio interview for Pure FM’s Bang Bang
Baby Dee was interviewed for Bang Bang, a program of the French speaking Belgium radio station Pure FM. The interview will be broadcasted on Sunday 25, between 20.00 and 22.00 hours.
Baby Dee invites the pope to Berlin concert
Jens Balzer:
Baby Dee, on the day of your Berlin gig in Berghain, there is another prominent visitor in town: the Pope! What do you think of him? Do you have any feelings – positive or negative – towards him and the Catholic (Christian) church in general?
Baby Dee:
To be honest I haven’t paid too much attention to the Pope. Probably no more than he’s paid attention to me. But I told my booking agent to make sure that we leave a complimentary ticket for him at the door. My only concern is that he might get confused and end up in the basement (editor: Berghains gay sex club Lab.oratory) by mistake. That could be bad!
Mark Michels reviews the Incubate Festival, Tilburg
It is Saturday and there is a buzz about the performance by Baby Dee, who is one of the few artists with two acts this weekend.
She is a transgender, coming from the scene surrounding Anthony, and can indeed be heard on his first album. In terms of looks, she may look like she just stepped out of bed, her booming voice, that ranges from wild growling to fragile grabs the audience instantly. Her piano performance is phenomenal and is constantly enhanced with the most outrageous grimaces. Backed by her serviceable band, yet another surprise has occured at Incubate.
Koen van Meel reviews the Hasselt concert
The setting for Baby Dee’s show was special: the whole room, including the side and back of the stage, was full of canvases by artist Christina De Vos, who designed the cover of Dee’s latest album ‘Regifted Light. The combination of the art work by De Vos and Baby Dee’s music created a special atmosphere in an environment in which everything seemed to fit.
OMH’s Blair Kelly gives Baby Dee Goes Down To Amsterdam 4.5 stars!
This album is song after song of sheer brilliance encapsulated in Baby Dees vibrant and quirky stage persona. Truly unusual and beautiful.
Baby Dee’s crabbiest interview ever
Recently Baby Dee was interviewed on her concert in Warsaw by the Polish newspaper Zycie Warszawy. In the interview Baby Dee sets the record straight about her checkered past.
I don’t normally answer questions like this for a lot of good reasons, not the least of which is this. Though I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice man (or lady?) you almost certainly won’t be able to publish my entire answer…
Koen van Meel reviews Regifted Light
Piano, cello, glockenspiel and horns are of predictable color, but the presence of a tuba and especially the grumpy bassoon crush the cheap counterfeit crystal this kind of music often suffers from and give it an earthy edge.
Hilton Als reviews Regifted Light
The first time I saw Baby Dee, I couldn’t take my eyes off her, not least because of how she delivered a song. It was as if Henry Purcell had found his muse. Like the lyrics of Purcells aria for the Cold Genius, Baby Dees are concentrated and fanciful.
New Yorker illustration: Baby Dee by Marie Assénat
Steve Horowitz reviews Regifted Light
While Baby Dees vocalizations tend to get most of the attention, because she has such a distinctive and unusual voice, shes also a tremendous pianist and composer. She makes the Steinway a prominent feature of every song. Her piano music, as on her solo Cowboy Street, demands critical respect and attention for its compositional qualities and the caliber of her playing.
Chicago Reader’s Recommended and notable shows
Her delivery is dramatic and clearly stage-conscious, and on several tunes (the title track, “Brother Slug and Sister Snail,” “On the Day I Died”) it also carries a reverent, spiritual intensitya consciously earnest formality that’s just breathtaking.
Andrew W.K. interviews Baby Dee
For her newly released sixth album, Regifted Light, transgender chamber-pop artist Baby Dee teamed with hyperactive party punk, motivational speaker and childrens television host Andrew W.K. The two friends share a love for (and ownership of) a certain Steinway piano, which is the centerpiece of the lovely, classical-influenced record. We had producer Andrew W.K. chat with Dee to discuss the instrument, their relationship and Cleveland, Ohio.
Andrew Duncan reviews Regifted Light
Baby Dee plays the piano like some people make love.
Rowan Savage reviews Regifted Light
…where 2008’s Safe Inside The Day was a Bradbury-esque, Bakhtinian carnival (an environment with which Dee has not been unfamiliar in her métierical rise), Regifted Light is a music box albeit the ballerina’s springs creak a little oddly as she pops up to dance, the moonlight glinting on the contents gives them a slightly surreal quality and those marks on the felt, are they bloodstains or pie juice?
Andy Whitman
The music here is so lovely, the sentiments so open and gentle, that the expected camp (and there is a bit) fades to near irrelevance.
Peter Sjöblom reviews Regifted Light
Baby Dees musik är både spröd och kraftfull på en och samma gång. Outgrundlig. Enastående vacker. Förbryllande. Lika lättillgänglig som gäckande. (Baby Dee’s music is both delicate and powerful at the same time. Inscrutable. Exquisitely beautiful. Puzzling. Just as easily accessible as elusive.)
Kurt B. Reighley on Regifted Light
As for the vocal works, it isnt difficult to imagine some earnest young mezzo-soprano warbling On The Day I Died or the title song in a recital hall. But even a singer with superior technique couldnt top Dees performance of The Pie Song, which brings surprising depth and range of feeling to a seemingly frivolous little ditty.
Jennifer Farmer reviews Regifted Light
Though the press release describes Light as a largely wordless album, and true, the Steinway D is the real star in this sky, Dees sparse yet poetic lyrics and haunting falsetto are not to be disregarded.
Nice ‘Little Review’ from France
Cet album est comme une fleur sensuelle et romantique. (This album is like a sensual and romantic flower.)
8.4 review from Cleber Facchi
Regifted Light é sem dúvidas o trabalho mais conciso e funcional de toda a carreira da artista. (Regifted Light is undoubtedly the most concise and functional work of the artist’s entire career.)
J. Poet review at Crawdaddy Magazine
“Regifted Light” is an ode to love and illumination addressed to the moon and her lover. The euphoric poetry of the lyric traces the magic of moonlight from sun, to moon, to a lover’s eyes as Dee’s voice leaps octaves, descending into a warm purr and up to a jubilant cry. It’s as much opera as pop.
Ben Graham interviews Baby Dee for The Quietus
There’s a kind of playfulness to the music, and I notice with the titles, there’s this ongoing cowboy theme running through it. How much should we read into the titles?
Logan K. Young’s Dusted Review of Regifted Light
like Beethoven, Baby Dee’s co-opted the classical rhetoric of a recurring theme, and like Brahms-post-Beethoven, s/he’s mastered the device of developing variation — something that today’s best legit composers often miss.
Pitchfork’s Brian Howe calls Regifted Light Baby Dee’s ‘best album yet’
Dee caresses and pounds producer Andrew WK’s Steinway D to life with the lyrical bluster of Gershwin and the nimble thematic development of Sondheim. It’s a welcome change of pace from the post-minimalism that’s rampant in indie piano music.
All Music’s James Christopher Monger gives Regifted Light four star rating
When she does include vocals, like on the stellar “Yapapipi” and the sentimental “On the Day I Died,” it sounds like the last night of a lost weekend in Tudor England, conjuring up images of weary but content courtesans, off-work servants, and assorted gentry watching the sunrise from the basement window of a D.I.Y., early music house show.
Sharon Kean interviews Baby Dee for The Line of Best Fit
Performance artist, harpist and pianist Baby Dee has just released her most recent and most experimental LP to date, Regifted Light. In equal measures classically medieval and brilliantly absurd, it is like nothing else on the record shelves, juxtaposing odes to pie with poems about slugs.
Giuseppe Zevolli interviews Baby Dee for Indie Eye
Da certi artisti non sai davvero cosa aspettarti. Cerchi di pensare alle domande giuste da fare, ma hai la sensazione che ogni domanda specifica risulti restrittiva e che non ci siano dinamiche promozionali che tengano: finirà comunque per prevalere la loro personalità imprevedibile e il loro carisma.
