3 / 10
Forget the lovingly airbrushed erotica of their photo shoots: with neither a restraining bodice nor a suggestive pout to divert the attention, the Mediaeval Baebes are at their most cruelly exposed on the CD player.
They represent what corporate chaps call 'marketing synergy' - the Thinking's Man's Totty meets the post-Gregorian chant modern coffee-table classical groove thing. The lisping, aerated choral-ography of their second album is supposedly where the girls' artistry, rather than 'naughty' image, takes prominence. What a laugh: the dribbling baby talk titles alone - 'Kinderley', 'Waylayaway' and 'Swete Sonne' - make Vanilla seem like heavyweight thinkers. Though they mostly stick to these pre-dropped balls choirboy intimations of purified naughtiness, 'So Sprecht Das Laben' is a lunatic lullaby with a witch's voiceover. Enough to have anyone howling at the moon.
Thankfully, it's a very narrow idea of medieval culture that the Baebes and their musical arranger Katherine Blake propagate. The teeming inventiveness of ye olde Incredible String Band and the great Ultramarine/Robert Wyatt pairing 'We're Low' drew on fertile areas from the distant past that 'Worldes Blysse' doesn't even attempt to meddle with. A small blessing, but one for which we should all be grateful.
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