Pretty Baby began in 2016 as a conceptual solo project for vocalist and guitarist Rusty Colton. Noticing how often love songs circle around the same familiar figure, he started writing from the perspective of Pretty Baby, a worn, drug-addled rock star who still holds onto a belief that he deserves to be sung about. After years spent working through the Charlotte, NC indie scene, Colton brought in a group of friends to expand the project into a full band.
On Layaway Plot, Pretty Baby draws from post punk, noise rock, and hardcore to create a totally organic blend. Guitars cut sharply through restless basslines and volatile drums, while uneasy synths drift beneath Colton’s strained, searching vocals. There is a sad, mournful weight to the record as vulnerability, rage, and a dry, self-aware edge are all present, along with times that seem like they might give out.
8:25pm Greenwich Fucking Mean leans into that emotional core. Carried by momentum and a sense of immediacy that creates an imprint that endures, its unadorned sentiment lands effortlessly.
Colton comment on the inspiration behind the album: "Lyrically and musically, Layaway Plot was inspired largely by the passing of my mother in 2023. Within the span of a couple of months, I had gotten married, lost my mom, and had a seismic shift in the band lineup. That really spurred us on and a lot of these songs, or at least their skeletons, fell out of us pretty quickly. Once we realized that sort of every song we were writing came from a similar place and had a common thread, I think we immediately started imagining it as an LP.
"Creatively we drew from a lot of different things. For the sake of brevity I’ll limit it to At the Drive-In, Unwound, William Gibson’s novels and a video game called Norco– if you’re experiencing familial grief in the midst of that sort of near future apocalypse blues, that is the game for you."
ZR