Baby Alpaca’s Gorgeous, Sad ‘Wild Child’
Actual baby alpacas do not appear to be confrontational creatures, unless you consider nearly nuzzling a kitten to death to be representative of an aggro species. Baby Alpaca, the pseudonym of Brooklyn-based musicians Chris Kittrell and Zach McMillan, also doesn’t come off confrontational—Kittrell’s narrator is just sad, hurting, and waiting for you to figure it out. On “Wild Child,” off his new self-titled EP, he hits a former lover with his best quavering James Blake impersonation to convey that he’s doing absolutely fine, thanks for asking, and you shouldn’t write him off so quickly. There’s a drum machine oozing repressed emotion, and a spectral chorus to back up lonesome lyrics like “You said I was a loser,” which Kittrell utters with the resigned despondence of someone unsure of his ability to prove otherwise. Baby Alpaca is out via Atlas Chair Records on June 25.