Interview: Baker Island

Now firmly re-established following a lengthy hiatus, the biggest challenge facing Baker Island appears to be keeping pace with their own creative kingpin. “We’re recording new stuff at the moment” reveals leader Sean Dodds, in a conversation which, though ostensibly about his band’s new EP, can’t help but veer into the future. “We’re going to be doing some songs with Anthony Chapman in January,” he effuses. “He’s just produced the new Mclusky album, so I imagine those will end up being on the noisier side!”

Before those fruits see the light of day, Sean and company have a backlog to get through. Long in the works, Baker Island’s first full-length album since 2017’s Restless Legs is done and ready to roll – tentatively pencilled in for an early 2026 release. But first there’s that aforementioned EP. Titled Love Eggtually, it’s their second this year following March’s comeback effort Stone Age Riot, and testament to the seemingly inexhaustible supply of slack, richly melodic fuzz-pop gems at their disposal.

“We had about 50 songs recorded in all,” Sean recalls. “Once we’d excluded the Stone Age ones and the album ones, the thought process for this EP was purely ‘what’s the best we have left?’ The nearest thing to a thread is that the last three songs – Dogged by Ill Luck, Champion’s Visit and Merited Victory – all have titles ripped from the subheadings of old sports pages!”

Evidently, then, this release isn’t the product of any grand, meticulously conceived masterplan – but don’t let Sean’s aloofness prove a deterrence. In fact, this off-the-cuff composition is reflected in Love Eggtually’s scattergun, patchwork charm – itself the product of a fluid ‘between line-ups’ musical cast, with members of indie-pop contemporaries The Wave Pictures, Haiku Salut and Witching Waves all weighing in. Front-loaded with syrupy earworm hooks, the opening gambit of Love Eggtually, Let Them Eat Cake and Have It and Fortune-Teller Fiend notably platform wonky synths in place of the usual guitar fuzz, yet every ounce of that trademark ramshackle Baker Island magic remains present and correct.

“There was no real thought behind it other than ‘I like this song, it’s ridiculous,’” Sean reiterates. “One blog we submitted to said they weren’t going to review Let Them Eat Cake and Have It because it was too chaotic. Fair enough I suppose. But that’s kind of the point…”

If that number oversteps the line, one can only imagine what they’d have made of the ‘subheadline suite’ which follows, in which Sean’s more esoteric, experimental impulses come to the fore. “Dogged by Ill Luck started out as my attempt to write a drum and bass song,” he admits. “I listened to loads of dance music when I was younger, so I know how it’s meant to sound, but it proved a lot more difficult than I expected! It just didn’t work at all. Fortunately I had a lot of time on my hands and after faffing about for a bit managed to reconfigure it into a Baker Island song.”

One method which did survive is sampling. Indeed, these six songs are littered with snippets of old techno records, film scores and ‘50s easy listening standards – and nowhere is this maximalist approach more obvious than seven-minute centrepiece Champion’s Visit. “That’s the one with the most crap on – viola, trumpet, everything. In my head I was trying to do something like The Beach Boys’ Smile – writing all these different parts and to trying fit them together. It’s my favourite song on the EP, and if I’d been able to do a radio edit maybe it would’ve been the single, but that just wouldn’t work. What I call the ‘chorus’ doesn’t come in until about six minutes!”

Naturally, follow-up and closer Merited Victory lasts all of 44 seconds. An appropriately nonchalant epilogue, whether by happenstance or design. Daft, disorderly and chock-full of offbeat gems… if Love Eggtually is the sound of Baker Island clearing the decks, that album ought to be quite something…