Baby Eagle - Bable Eagle

Your tolerance for Baby Eagle is entirely dependent on your feelings for Constantine Steve Lambke's abilities behind the mic. As the complement to Bry Webb's gruff howl, his twee vocals have often served as highlights on the Cons three LPs (see: "Scoundrel Babes," "Thieves"). They don't work quite as well in the vacuum of intensity that is his Baby Eagle debut. The instrumentation by Weakerthan John K. Samson and his wife, Christine Fellows, is excellent, but Lambke can't seem to decide exactly what he wants to do on top of it. He's at his best when he's near a whisper, like on "Let Wander Your Restless Heart" and "Half Moon On The City High," or at full wail ("Redpath Sugar Factory"). If Lambke's anywhere between these parametres, he's basically just talking. On the whole, it's an odd and sometimes charming contrast between tunefulness and tunelessness.