Yesterday, 5th October, West London dream-pop band Babeheaven released their new single, Craziest Things, and its psychedelic animated music video. Craziest Things is a teaser single from their upcoming debut album Home For Now, which is due for release on 20th November via AWAL.
The track opens with a velvety bass line underpinning a reverberating electric guitar. A steady drum-beat soon enters alongside Nancy Andersen’s angelic voice singing: ‘I have been losing sleep// My minds on the craziest things// I lie in bed, trying not to think// but my heads on the ceiling.’
Front-woman Andersen says that the song is about ‘[her] anxiety and insomnia, not being able to make sense of [her] emotions and mania’. This can be felt in those opening lyrics, which beautifully depict the all too relatable feeling of racing thoughts before sleep.
As the song continues, the echoing chorus ‘I’m sorry I’m climbing up the walls// I couldn’t lay their anymore…’ gets more insistent. There is a continuous motif running through the track, which sounds like a harp but is in fact a detuned ukulele, giving it a dreaminess typical of Babeheaven’s music.
The fluorescent-hued video, directed by award-winning animator Sacha Beeley, is a playful and surreal depiction of sleepless anxiety. The trippy visuals of dripping taps and floating hearts on the ceiling mirror the ‘Craziest thoughts’ that Anderson describes.
Jamie Travis and Nancy Andersen, the band’s main members, have known each other since they were about 13. They used to go back to one of their houses after finishing their day jobs and ‘mess about recording songs’. This friendly intimacy permeates Babeheaven’s music.
In 2016 Nancy spoke to FADER about the band’s debut video for Heaven, explaining that she and Jamie both grew up ‘in an area knowing everybody… all our siblings are friends, and our parents are friends too’. The video ‘shows [them] in [their] natural habitat’ of West London streets and bedrooms.
A personal warmth runs through all of Babeheaven’s music as a result of this. Tracks like November and It’s Not Easy feel like they come straight from the pages of Andersen’s diary. The latter is a misty ode to guitarist Jamie in which Andersen sings: ‘I am glad you made me go and perform…my legs were shaking throughout// Jamie it’s not easy but you play so beautifully.’
Talking about Craziest Things, she speaks about her anxiety toward performing, stating: ‘As a person of colour and a plus-size woman, I’ve never felt that comfortable with myself as a performer’. Over lockdown she has worked on remembering that she ‘is on that stage for a reason, particularly as a person of colour.’ There is no doubt that Nancy and the band truly deserve their place on the stage.
