“The first song I wrote for Slippers was a kid’s song,” says Slippers’ Madeline Babuka Black over Google Meets. “I was nannying at the time and just so annoyed at how bad the shows I was watching with the kid were.” Chugging on an iced coffee, she says Paw Patrol was like her number one enemy. “A lot of that stuff is so pandering.” The song ‘Monkey Over There’ – released in 2019 on the Here’s Some Slippers EP – marries a deadpan, Liz Phair-ish vocal delivery, surreal lyrics about a sombre simian (“He just sits there/ And reads New York Times“) with a mid-track flex into a shimmering ’60s bop. And in one minute, thirty-four seconds it captured the essence of Slippers’ music: garage pop with a whimsical edge. But speaking to Babuka Black, it becomes clear that there’s a specificity to the sounds she is pursuing. “I think the ‘90s-does-the-’60s thing is something I’m attracted to,” she says, referencing bands like Jellyfish. “I like a lot of bands inspired by The Kinks or The Beatles. A lot of the songwriting from that era feels like a home base for me: I like the storytelling. I think The Kinks are masters of making songs that are funny and ‘slice of life’.”
She could be describing Slippers’ new album, Slippers 08, the follow-up to their debut 2024’s So You Like Slippers? It brims with situational sunshine, beautifully realised fuzzed-up sonic textures and gauzy songwriting that feels instantly canon. “I do think a lot of music sounds a little too perfect these days,” Babuka Black says while admitting a love for Joe Meek’s recording aesthetic and early experimentation. The baroque ‘Reading Lucy’s Diary’, “about a husband and wife – and the husband’s cheating and the wife knows it,” is a great example, inspired by the story-songs of The Kinks but also Of Montreal (“Kevin Barnes is an incredible poet and lyricist”) and Saint Etienne’s Good Humour. “There’s one song on that album that’s like a soap opera: ‘You’re my sister – don’t take my man!’”
The songwriting for the new album began in an experimental setting. “I did this thing called a Song Salon with other musicians where you try and write 12 songs in 12 hours,” she recalls. “I couldn’t do that – but it turned into ‘why don’t we try to write a song in one day, from start to finish.” Getting input from the collective of songwriters was “a great way to get out of your own way and be like, ‘Okay, I need a verse here.'”
The collaborative nature of the Song Salon bled into Slippers 08. “I had a bunch of friends who played on the record,” she says. Growing up her father played bluegrass music which fed into communal ideas about playing together. “With bluegrass there’s kind of no limit to how many people are playing.” Music was a feature of her extended family. “My grandma played dulcimer, my cousin is a composer and in my family there are several preachers. I grew up going to an Episcopal church and there’s a lot of old school choir music going on.” Writing and recording her first song when she was three (‘Fleas That Mite You Bite You’), Babuka Black’s nascent music career grew in parallel to one in the other creative arts.
“I used to be a balloon artist. I got fired because somebody thought I was stealing their balloon designs,” she says. “I need to make a TV show about the balloon community because there’s something about them that’s so incredible. They all used to date each other.” A more successful route was animation. Mirroring her music, she fell in love with the ’90s-meet-’60s aesthetic on kids’ shows like The Power Puff Girls, Dexter’s Lab and Cow and Chicken. She moved from Atlanta to New York to pursue her studies in animation and that parallel career seems to be thriving: she’s made two films. Music provides a balm when animation gets too lonely. “Being part of the music community gets me out of animation which can be solitary. With music you have to be physically there to do it.”
Unlike So You Like Slippers, which was largely recorded on a four-track, Slippers 08 is a more expansive affair but begins the same way. “Being a drummer, usually the way we do it is I’ll do a scratch take while playing the drums, which is kind of psycho.” Babuka Black says she likes being behind the drums when playing live. “You have a beverage holder, you have a little seat. It just feels more comfortable,” she says, adding that she likes the meditative state it puts you in. “I can close my eyes and if I’m singing and playing, I have no room for any thoughts at that point because I’m in survival mode. You’re in the moment.”
Babuka Black’s favourite song on the new album is the deceptively breezy chamber pop of ‘Wasted Tonight’, featuring some tragi-comic lines about a stumbling drunk (“Said I don’t care/ It’s an anti-social affair”). “I’m sober now,” she says. “I was thinking about my friends from high school and college and you’d go out and get wasted.”
The codependent relationship between alcohol and musicians is well-documented. “Drinking and music go hand in hand, they’re besties. Everybody who does music not under the influence – that’s quite brave.” Babuka Black says she remembers being younger and feeling frustrated when her music wasn’t taking off faster than it did. “Thank fudcking God they didn’t happen because I would have tanked. Without being under the influence of drugs and alcohol it’s so much easier for me to take myself seriously,” she says. “I’m grateful for my sobriety. As an alcoholic it’s just not sustainable for me to go on tour and expect my body to keep up with how much I want to drink.”
With the release of her second animated short film set to premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal, she’s also planning some new material. “I’m hopefully going to record a new record in September with Ross Farbe in New Orleans. He’s really into weird recording techniques.” She also hopes to up the ante for future live shows. “I need to freaking learn magic for Slippers. If I could do some magic tricks in the show. That’s the next step.”
Slippers’ Slippers 08 is out now via K/Perennial.
