Sweet Baboo returns after a hiatus since 2018 - the band hits the road to promote their new album due March 2023 through Moshi Moshi. It’s going to be a delight as always of delicious electro funk.

A native of the North Wales countryside, Sweet Baboo aka Stephen Black is a single minded, idiosyncratic singer possessing an ear for sparkling melody and a gift for a deft lyrical turn – from darkly funny to piercingly tender, twinkling boastful to deliciously self-deprecating.

Sometimes performing solo with an acoustic guitar, sometimes with a full electric band, his music is influenced by the likes of The Beach Boys, Daniel Johnston and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci but with a unique delivery all of his own.

Having already released Hopeless and the H Hawkline-penned Good Luck from the album,

his first in five years, Sweet Baboo – also known as Cardiff-based Stephen Black – follows

the feint outline of previous albums, including 2013’s ‘hit’ album Ships and more recent,

acclaimed long-players, Boombox Ballads and Wild Imagination, where the quaint, absurd,

heartfelt and humdrum each get their moment in song. Frequently more than one at the

same time. In writing a song for the houseplants whose lives could not be saved, Black

finally says the words he’s long been wanting to sing to the planted, potted and, often

inevitably, composted.

Established within a mutually-supportive, collaborative community of artists operating in and

outside Wales, touring as a member of Gruff Rhys and Cate Le Bon’s bands in recent

years, Black brought together Boy Azooga’s Davey Newington on drums, his Group

Listening band mate, Paul Jones on synths and BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-nominated

singer-songwriter, Georgia Ruth on vocals for the recording of Horticulture.

Clarifying that not all of the plants in his life failed to survive his oversight, Black says:

“’Horticulture’ was a song that had been running around my brain for a good few years. I

must have changed the words to the chorus about four or five times. It’s a song about my

love of and, sometimes, failure to keep the house plants alive but also a note to self to keep

fit and healthy.”

Video producer, Pete Ingo, creating the track’s enigmatic visuals, said: “’Horticulture’, for

me, is a song about love, tenderness and a perseverance. I wanted to make a visual that

reflected this. Sweet Baboo’s music has always had that ‘domestique magique’ running

through to its core and I wanted the characters in the video to be the embodiment of this…

but turned up to 11... slowly... and a cat. “”

Offering a communal experience in which the Sweet Baboo back catalogue and new music,

plus between-song musings, eschew the burning issues of the day to handle, instead, the

thoughts and life-events normally absent from the rock and roll songbook,