Durtro Jnana
Very little has changed about Baby Dee's sound since her earliestdemos, still the same hauntingly affected voice singing fragile songsabout love, loss, gender, identity, mothers and fathers, and the tiny,seemingly insignificant memories that collect over time to comprise ouremotional lives. On all three of these tracks, Baby Dee accompaniesherself on piano (no harp this time), with bright, sad minor-keymelodies that set her songs aloft. There is still somethingunmistakably, gnawingly creepy about the pain and sadness that seems aninseparable part of Baby Dee's transgender vocals, even when she singsrelatively joyful songs like "Morning Fire," a simple and sweetdeclaration of love. On "Three Women," Dee sings a mournful song whichseems to be about her desire for motherhood: "I'm making a cradle/Outof broken arms/Out of arms that sing." On the song's masculinecounterpart "Three Men," Dee sings lyrics so achingly simple they couldbe straight out of a book of nursery rhymes, but they are nonethelesssad and evocative: "I went to see my mother/And I got lost/Now it's sohard to get home...I heard your children singing/In a western sky/Letthem call that sky their own." There are many who will doubtlesscontinue to regard Baby Dee as a novelty freak show (as a youth, sheworked in a Coney Island circus sideshow as a bilateral hermaphrodite),something along the lines of a transsexual Tiny Tim. However, there area precious few enthusiasts, who like me, never regarded Tiny Tim as anovelty act, and don't think of Baby Dee that way either. Baby Dee isan utterly unique voice in contemporary music, one that once you havelet it into your heart, can scarcely be forgot. - Jonathan Dean
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