Tom Lynch

Transgender songwriter and artist Baby Dee has been building a strong cult following since 2001’s "Little Window," and last month’s splendid "Safe Inside the Day" (Drag City) should continue the graceful avalanche of attention. Built with piano, string accompaniment, affecting bass and Dee’s moving cabaret-style voice, the record documents the artist’s upbringing in 1950s Cleveland, and the subject matter creates a nostalgic ache, not unknown in Dee’s previous work, of course, but here it’s an even more glorious trip. The remarkable arrangements—pushed forward so gently by brushed, sporadic drums—lead to theater-like performance, and the emotive, often cathartic results find, amidst all the oddness, a heart-stopping after-burn. "Back in the fifties/Clark Kent died/It’s a bird/It’s a plane/It’s suicide," could’ve been a creatively disastrous lyric, but Dee’s delivery is powerful enough to pull it off. Stirring work overall.

Baby Dee plays February 7 at Empty Bottle, 1035 North Western, (773)276-3600, at 10pm. $12. (2008-02-06)

Also by Tom Lynch

Hearing Voices
Amongst the chaotic cacophony of Able Baker Fox’s debut record, "Voices," melodies are found and lost and found again, as a trio of vocals push against one another and pull away as the songs come to crushing ends
(2008-01-29)

Tip of the Week
Chicago minimalist crew Smallwire’s pretty, obviously titled "Songs for Sleeping In" on Moorworks is daring in its restraint and, by its very nature, humble in its presentation
(2008-01-29)

Tip of the Week
Chicago minimalist crew Smallwire’s pretty, obviously titled "Songs for Sleeping In" on Moorworks is daring in its restraint and, by its very nature, humble in its presentation
(2008-01-29)

Looking at Mr. Goodbar
To spend an entire Saturday evening at Estelle’s, from 9pm until 5am, is a daunting challenge . The bar’s staff doesn’t even do that. A traditional workday, flipped to the night. Estelle’s, the late-night lounge as famous for its harboring of poets and vandals back in the day as now the place where strangers make liaisons unclouded by judgment, has a different face on the weekend than it does during the work week, as do most of the bars whose signs illuminate the streets of this rapidly shifting neighborhood
(2008-01-22)

Soundcheck
(2008-01-22)

Tip of the Week
(2008-01-22)

Tip of the Week
(2008-01-15)

Care-Bare
(2008-01-08)

The Year in Rock
(2007-12-31)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-31)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-26)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-18)

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