We had left BABX far ahead, a lone breakaway, a magnificent kamikaze, upon the release of his first album. Across thirteen epileptic, haunted songs of incredible class, one thing was clear: the boy was operating in a higher league, rubbing shoulders with his masters, from Waits to Ferré, and right from his very first try, he set the bar at heights not seen in ages.
A virtuoso singer, an outsized author with the language of a meticulous goldsmith, an orgiastic, whimsical, elegant, wrecked yet always precise composer, endowed with a memory like an elephant's and a visionary's curiosity, BABX blew us away with his poetic and musical ambition, his power, and his contagious fever. Convinced we wouldn't see him again anytime soon, we awaited his return like one watches for a comet, the fall of a meteor.
And now arrives Cristal Ballroom, carrying aboard a tightrope-walking and daring BABX, a traveler, haunted as never before. Right from the opening title track, we rise far above the common run of local songcraft. We know we will go high. Very high. And nothing that follows will belie that initial impression. No deviation from the album's coherence, no drop in momentum, no submission to the dictates of radio formats, single-oriented culture, or commerce: the scope of the atmospheres, the sophistication of the lyrics, the richness of the textures—the album unfolds, exactingness is everywhere, and the ambition is impressive.
BABX sings, speaks, chants, and his voice spreads, laps, licks, coils, creases, breaks, he even screams, and the chills take over. That's a sign. How long had it been since a singer screaming had moved us, pierced us? How long had that failed to provoke anything in us other than the urge to laugh?
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