Backyard Babies – 'Silver And Gold' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Good Morning Midnight

2. Simple Being Sold

3, Shovin’ Rocks

4. Ragged Flag

5. Yes To All No

6. Bad Seeds

7. 44 Undead

8. Silver And Gold

9. A Day Late In My Dollar Shorts

10. Laugh Now Cry Later

Backyard Babies made one of the most seminal albums of my teenage years, the infamous “Total 13”. Ever since then I’ve listened to most of their albums as they come out, to varying degrees of excitement. Some have been good, some have been average, but for some reason I had a gut instinct that 'Silver And Gold' was going to be a good album.

But it turned out I was wrong. This isn’t a good album. It’s a FANTASTIC album.

From the album opener “Good Morning Midnight”, you are grabbed and taken on a down and dirty Rock n’ Roll journey, with fuzzy guitars and spat out vocals taking you along for the ride. The second track “Simple Being Sold” throws some nice big chorus vocals into the mix, before “Shovin’ Rocks” segues into a slightly more Classic Rock feel.

And the album just continues to get stronger from there. There is pure Rock n’ Roll brilliance shining through in every track – with my own particular favourites being “Ragged Flag” with it’s singalong chorus, “A Day Late In My Dollar Shorts” for feeling like an impossibly good version of every song I tried to write in my teens, and the title track itself “Silver And Gold” is one of the strongest songs I’ve heard in years – not just by the Backyard Babies, but by any band at all!

Essentially, this album just makes me grin from ear to ear throughout every listen. It grabs you by the heart and just makes you feel happy and uplifted, and who doesn’t want that in this day and age?

It’s hard to be critical of an album that makes you feel this happy – you could say that the songs themselves are pretty simple in places, or that they feel quite 90s, or that the choice to end the album with the slowest track “Laugh Now Cry Later” is a strange one, and I’d agree with all of that.

But ultimately, the whole album just grabs me and takes me on a journey that I love. And isn’t that what we listen to music for?

Buy it. Stream it. Listen to it. Enjoy.