Interview: Melanie Baker

Photo by Ellen Dixon

Sometimes it’s easy to recognise your musical brethren – those whose journeys are hewn from similar formative foundations. It’s a sensation I experienced amid the cascade of anthemic choruses and crunchy guitars bursting from Melanie Baker’s excellent debut album. “I was a big fan of Nirvana when I was a teenager – when I was beginning to get into my own music rather than following what my parents or people at school were listening to,” she confirms. It’s a well-trodden path for millennials and Gen Zs alike; mirroring my own relationship with the band who’ve sparked so many adolescents’ musical big bangs. For wider connoisseurs of ‘90s culture, even the record’s title – Somebody Help Me, I’m Being Spontaneous! – may ring a bell. More on that later…

Born and raised in the Lake District, Melanie’s reputation as a burgeoning songwriter began to gather steam four years ago when she relocated to Newcastle. Initially a solo performer, her raw, candid lyrical style proved an instant hit on the local live circuit, blossoming further still as she assembled a full live band. A debut EP, Burnout Baby, followed in 2024 – yet the leap that’s culminated in her full-length was neither linear nor inevitable.

“It was a happy accident,” Melanie recalls. “I was coming out of a very difficult depression, starting to enjoy life again and felt really creative for the first time in a long while. It was also my first time having my own little studio. I was just going in and writing simply because I had ideas and was having loads of fun – not necessarily to make an album. I’m glad it happened that way, as I wasn’t putting too much pressure on myself. It was only when I realised those demos were all telling a similar story that I began piecing them together, and only later when I wrote the two bookends [AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! and You’ll Get Better] that I knew I had an album.”

Crucially, while hosting sonic DNA that’ll prick the ears of grunge, riot grrrl and indie rock enthusiasts, I’m Being Spontaneous… is by no measure a backward-facing project, content merely to dust off old cobwebs. The mix is razor sharp, channelling all the fire and vivacity one could hope for from a debut. Prolific guitar hooks soar with an unleashed ebullience that’s essentially timeless. And moreover, the album’s cathartic core rejects both gloom and cliché, framing itself through the lens of a mid-20s queer woman navigating tumult in a cursed decade. “I didn’t want it to feel like a revivalist record,” she attests. “I was born in ’98, so I’m barely even a ‘90s kid. I can’t claim to be part of that generation, so I wanted it to be rooted in the present and to feel like my voice.”

Discovering that voice, however, has been no simple feat. In fact, its pursuit became the record’s chief emotional anchor; a self-exploratory quest spelled out on early highlight Sad Clown. “When you struggle with your mental health, you can lose your way, and feel like you’re becoming a caricature, or a clown version of yourself,” she says. “Sad Clown is about trying to get a hold of my identity again – about wanting to be who I am, but not necessarily being certain of who that is.”

When a breakthrough did arrive, it came through embracing a side of her personality Melanie’s previous songs had rarely touched upon. “I was experimenting with a different tone of voice, being sillier, more sarcastic and poking fun, she reveals.” It’s a shift which manifests with infectious zeal across the album’s 12 tracks – from the disarmingly playful account of burnout offered on another memorable single, HAHA!, to Why Would I Want to Be Just Like You?’s excoriating putdown of antithetical voices encouraging her to play ‘The Game.’ “I never studied the craft of songwriting or music theory, so I’ve always done things by gut instinct. It was a type of writing I’d never tried before, but because of the headspace I was in at the time, it all came very naturally.”

This liberated mantra found further inspiration in another pillar of ‘90s culture, Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show – specifically the moment its protagonist, Jim Carrey’s Truman Burbank, realises his entire life has been constructed for reality TV, with friends, family and passers-by all in on it and paid to maintain the illusion. “I had an epiphany during that scene where he’s driving around doing silly stuff knowing that the whole world is watching, and shouts ‘SOMEBODY HELP ME, I’M BEING SPONTANEOUS!’” Melanie recalls. “It was something I could really relate to – that realisation that this is my life, I’m in charge of it and can make decisions – even bad decisions – for myself. It’s an empowering moment and really embodies a lot of what I was trying to say with this album.”

That word ‘spontaneous’ could equally be attributed to the album’s recording process, which saw Melanie decamp to rural Wales with trusty guitarist John Evans and drummer Adam Robson in tow. “I’m not inspired by being in professional recording studios,” she laments. “They’re usually windowless rooms, and you spend hours upon hours in them recording over and over again. I wanted to go somewhere totally new that I had no connection to, where I could be close to nature and capture a moment in time. A lot of things went wrong that week, and not by choice we ended up in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t set up to be a recording studio, and there was a big storm all week while we were crammed in – which is why there’s an interlude track called Cabin Fever! But because it was so remote we could turn our amps all the way up, make loads of noise, follow our instincts and just let it happen.”

With an April tour of independent record shops – kicking off with a release day in store at Reflex, Newcastle – plus a full-band UK tour to come in May, the fruits of that week are primed to delight ears and grace record collections across the land. Factor in the inevitable power of word-of-mouth, and we can expect to hear plenty more from Melanie Baker, in 2026 and beyond.

Somebody Help Me, I’m Being Spontaneous! is released on Friday 10th April via Tambourhinocerous. Melanie Baker will perform at a release day in-store at Reflex, Newcastle, and at The Grove, Newcastle on Saturday 30th May.