Adult Baby

Editors’ Notes The title for Blonde Redhead vocalist Kazu Makino’s first solo album came when Makino learned of a club where men could go and get treated like children—a concept by turns private, eerie, liberating, and, if you surrender some pretenses, a little bit sweet. What follows is the kind of breathy experimental pop that conjures moods of almost unsettling intimacy, as close as a whisper and disjointed as a dream (“Meo,” “Adult Baby”). Even when Makino lets things lock into something a bit more straightforward (“Undo,” “Come Behind Me, So Good!”), the music maintains an intoxicating lack of balance, a sense of secrets disappearing under covers and behind corners. Featuring guest spots from Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier and—on five of the album’s nine tracks—the venerated Japanese avant-pop composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, it’s a wholly unusual and uncommon album.