Based around North London’s Siân Alex, Gold Baby is a band that’s gone through several forms in its relatively short life, each change shrinking the core and solidifying the sensibilities of the Gold Baby sound. With Alex stepping up to lead guitar in the newest iteration, the name is coming to have more and more meaning. Drawn from the Sylvia Plath poem, ‘Lady Lazarus’, the title speaks of the struggle against adversity and the inner strength that makes this possible, the self-confidence and belief required to survive as an artist. ‘I am the pure gold baby,” reads one line in the poem. “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / and I eat men like air’.”
“I had wanted to write something about how fucked up it is that we glorify the idea of the suffering artist,” Alex wrote of the name in a Facebook post. “Which was what I took the poem to be about, and which resonated with me because as far as I could see, my own ‘suffering’ has only ever stopped me from getting on with writing.” Only, the phrase Gold baby has only grown in its meaning as time as gone on. “But now when I read the poem I take something else from it,” Alex continues. “That she is battling with becoming her own source of strength and learning—or trying to learn—how to take up space.”
Showing off the ethereal blend of grunge, folk and rock that constitutes the Gold Baby style, new single ‘500/1’ finds Alex conversing with her past self, confessing how little has changed to the innocent adolescent and noting with disbelief and no small amount of dissatisfaction just how much time has passed.
You came here from 2003
You thought that I’d be bigger didn’t you?
You thought that I’d be better didn’t you, admit itI’ll show you around my sad little town
All I’ve learned is duller ways to waste my timeFive hundred to one
You still went back and put a bet on
