With a dirty-blues snarl and a downtown punk streak sharpened by thirty years in the East Village, The Compulsions return with the new lyric video for their swaggering single, “Baby, Baby, Baby (Baby).”
Frontman Rob Carlyle—a fixture of East Village bars and clubs since long before the neighborhood’s vibe got steamrolled—pairs his junkyard-dog vocals with chainsaw guitars, a coffin-shaker organ, and a menacing, steam-hammer drum loop crafted during early demo sessions with longtime collaborator and New York Blues Hall of Fame Master Artist, Hugh Pool.
The track is a wicked little blues-punk brawler: lust, frustration, and comeuppance, delivered with Carlyle’s trademark sneer. When the solo section hits, Carlyle and Pool trade licks like two alley cats fighting over a midnight mate, while Rob Clores (Black Crowes, Spin Doctors) sends his organ into a wild, gospel-gone-wrong wail.
The lyric video—art-directed and designed by Carlyle—pairs grainy black-and-white shots of Clores tearing into his piano part as Carlyle watches and Pool rides the board (all shot by Delissa Santos) with hot-pink handwritten typography, giving the whole piece the look of a lost punk-blues flyer pulled off a seedy club wall at 3 a.m.
“Baby, Baby, Baby (Baby)” continues Carlyle’s tradition of blending traditional blues grit with the raw, neon-soaked, back-alley pulse that has defined his work since the beginning—music born at the crossroads between a juke joint and a dive bar on Avenue A.