Bathe

Bathe, the Brooklyn-based R&B duo of singer-songwriter Devin Hobdy and guitarist-producer Corey Smith-West, announce their new album, Inside Voice(s) (out March 21st via MNRK Music Group), alongside its lead single/video, “Here,” and in conjunction announce a US tour supporting Cymande. Previewed last fall with the release of Inside Voice(s): Side A and a successful headline North American tour, Bathe’s first-ever headline run, Inside Voice(s) sets out to explore the dissonance that comes from being split between two places—where you are and where you want to be. “It’s about the idea that you might not ever get to the place you want to be, that you might feel that longing for the rest of your life, and that’s as OK as it can be,” says Hobdy.

Serene chords, luxurious beats, and infinitely hummable melodies soundtrack songs about familial grief, numbing millennial angst, and the cyclical despair of underserved communities. Featuring vocal production from Jake Aron (L’Rain, Snail Mail), mixing by Joe Visciano (SZA, Kendrick Lamar), and mastering by Joe LaPorta (David Bowie, Beach House), Inside Voice(s) follows in the lineage of albums like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange in being both lush and sorrowful—a plea to the present filled with ghosts of the past, emerging in an era when the future seems anything but certain.

Lead single, “Here,” in Bathe’s words, is a song about “the winter blues.” “We’re based in NYC, and so every year there’s a time where it feels like the sun is already falling right as the day starts. On days like that it can be tempting to just stay in bed and forget about the outside world altogether. Here is a soundtrack for anyone fighting that feeling and finding a way back to their feet.”

Devin Hobdy and Corey Smith-West formed Bathe eight years ago while attending the University of Pennsylvania. Now based in Brooklyn, the pair create music that, on the surface, sounds like a balm for the anxieties of modern life. This flowing sense of ease contributed to their 2021 debut album Bicoastal drawing in more than 30 millions streams. Amid that record’s unhurried grooves, though, were pangs of yearning and desperation that complicated Bathe’s placement in so many chill playlists.

Inside Voice(s) doubles down on this beguiling contrast. “‘Inside Voices’ is our attempt to make sense of the noise around and inside of us,” state Hobdy and Smith-West. “It contains the sounds of the hopes and joys that motivate us, as well as the fears and disappointments that tempt us to stay in bed. Writing this album forced us to sit with and come to terms with these voices, friendly and frightening, inside and out.”

Throughout Inside Voice(s), family members are evoked in tribute and remembrance as they guide Bathe through doubt spiritually and musically. The album’s hushed closing ballad “Bby Boy” finds Hobdy empathizing with his grandma, who passed away last year, with aching lines like, “Your hands are unfamiliar to you/Time moved, your memories forgot about you.” Smith-West also lost a grandmother recently, and she is immortalized via a voicemail that appears on “Hosannas,” a heavenly caress of a song about the inner turmoil that comes with losing your religion. Meanwhile, the legacy of Smith-West’s grandfather, a reggae guitarist, is heard through his grandson’s playing and production, while the influence of Hobdy’s mother, who studied jazz and took her son along with her to nightclub gigs in his youth, is felt in his searching vocal lines and pillowy harmonies.

The album’s two halves are a reflection of the differences between Hobdy and Smith-West as people and artists. Smith-West tends to gravitate toward sounds that are brighter and bouncier, as represented on Inside Voice(s): Side A, while Hobdy usually ends up with something darker and moodier when he sits down to write a song. The album’s second half is spare and pained, dotted with exploratory flourishes—blown-out outros, featherlight dance beats, dancehall loops—that hint at the myriad directions the duo could go next.

After the success of Bicoastal, Bathe came to understand what tens of millions of streams can and can’t do for an artist in today’s music landscape. It gave them confidence to trust their instincts as songwriters. It served as a beacon for like-minded collaborators, who helped them achieve the sound they were striving for. It offered some welcomed financial latitude—though not nearly as much as their friends and family thought it would bring. “Our heads can’t get too big because there’s a reality check around every corner,” Hobdy says. Inside Voice(s) is all about those moments when the real world intrudes on our best laid plans, when our inner monologues chafe against the image that’s present to the outside world. Its waters are welcoming, just don’t forget about the undertow.