Babe Rainbow are back with Acid and Honey, their seventh studio album, out now via the band’s own label Eureka! and AWAL. Led by the single “Waterfall,” the record finds the Byron Bay trio leaning further into twangy, country-tinged grooves while holding onto the sun-bleached, reverb-heavy haze that’s defined them since day one.
The band (Jack Crowther, Angus Dowling, and Elliot O’Reilly) has been at this since 2015, when they were working on a farm in the Byron Bay hinterland and started playing music together in their off hours. An early EP caught the ear of Triple J and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s label, Flightless Records, and that relationship stuck: Stu Mackenzie produced Babe Rainbow’s 2017 debut, and the two bands have been trading stages and swapping praise ever since.
Acid and Honey came together on a houseboat in Amsterdam before Kyle Mullarky, who also runs sound for the band’s live shows, wrapped up mastering and production at his ranch in Malibu. It’s a fitting origin story for a record this breezy. Across eleven tracks, songs like “Special,” “Amsterdam,” and “Mangoes” sit comfortably alongside “Waterfall” and “Polymuscalsaccharide,” never settling into one groove for too long, with the band pushing a little further into twangy, country-leaning territory than they have before.
Happy Mag called “Waterfall” “another blissed-out taste” of what was coming, and now that the whole thing is out, it’s easy to hear why. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have called it Babe Rainbow’s “slickest record ever,” and Jaden Smith’s been singing its praises too, which is good company for a band that’s always sounded like it’s having more fun than everyone else.
It’s also the band’s first album made entirely on its own terms. Babe Rainbow now own their masters outright, releasing through their own label, Eureka!, with AWAL handling the rest. Acid and Honey is out now on streaming and on vinyl through Impressed Recordings, Levitation, and Rough Trade. The band is also out on the road across North America through early August, with stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington D.C. along the way, so there’s a decent chance they’re rolling through a city near you.
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Photo by Jordan Malane.
