The Bargain Bin: Baby Dayliner - High Heart and Low Estate / Critics Pass Away - Brassland

Originally Printed in Eleven Magazine

I was sitting at the front counter, entering used CDs into the website database. A customer looked up from the new arrival bin and asked, “What’s playing right now?”

 “Baby Dayliner,” I said.

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

At the time, I was working with Darren Snow of KDHX’s Rocket 88 fame. He would spend hours searching music blogs for up-and-coming bands to both play on his show and sell in the store. It was Darren who hipped me to so many bands that fell into my wheelhouse: Hot Chip, The Go! Team, The Ting Tings, Giant Drag… The list goes on.

Baby Dayliner was the nom de plume of singer Ethan Marunas. After a few attempts to make it in various bands, Marunas decided to go it alone. Armed with only a microphone and a suitcase full of gadgets, Baby Dayliner would take the stage in a fury of dance moves while singing to sequenced electro tracks. A lot of the songster made with retro-sounding equipment, all of the parts playing back on tape as Marunas hopped around singing, karaoke style, along with himself.

I related heavily to this solo ideal, being surrounded by synths and samplers, drum machines and sequencers, writing my own songs. Baby Dayliner became my first record store music crush, and I was crushing hard.

High Heart & Low Estate was self-released in 2002, but soon gained some fans in The National after they witnessed a few of his solo performances. Brassland Records rereleased his debut in 2004. From the opening synth bass line, basic drum beats and electronic piano notes on “Raid!,” I was instantly hooked. Marunas’ low, nasally singing voice sound falls somewhere between Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson and The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt.

He has such control over his tenderness, often beautifully harmonizing with himself. While he tends toward twinkly, pre-programmed love songs, Baby Dayliner also wears his hip hop influences on his sleeve. On “Hoodlums in the Hit Parade,” he jauntily namecheck pretty much every cliche in the rap game. “Shah with That” somehow comes out as both a loving tribute to and parody of gangsta rap.

In October 2006, Baby Dayliner was set to perform at the old Creepy Crawl in support of his new album, Critics Pass Away. For that album Marunas had amped up the production, adding a larger array of instruments to the programming, and the effect was far more impressive than the first album, fully solidified my love for his music. That night the clouds dumped buckets of rain down on my car. I could barely see the other vehicles around us as my date and I barreled down the highway. She begged me to take her to see the Dresden Dolls, so instead of going to see a band that possibly I alone in all of St. Louis truly loved, I stood in the crowd at the Pageant miserably trying to drown out the attention seekers on stage, wholly regretting my decision. I therefore missed my chance to see favorite songs from his second album, songs like the dramatic “Silent Places” and David Byrnesy “Whodunit?,” performed for what was surely an empty room. As it turned out, all my date wanted was a Dresden Doll t-shirt, so we cleared out after half an hour. I’m so glad I saw it. (Sarcasm.)

Then… nothing. I patiently waited for another Baby Dayliner record and tour, to no avail. I tried the occasional Internet search, and very little info was forthcoming; it was like Marunas had just vanished off the face of the planet. It’s been album 10 years since Critics Pass Away came out, and I’d pretty much given up hope on there ever being more Baby Dayliner.

But then: just this week, as I was researching him for this very article, I stumbled across the Twitter account of one Ethan Marunas! To my pleasant surprise, he has started performing as Baby Dayliner again, and has even posted a few new tracks. They’re fresh and have a very professional yet funky feel to them. Will there be a new record? Who knows? I’m sure I’ll be the first to tell you about it if there is!

2020 Update:

Baby Dayliner released a trio of new EPs from 2017-2019.  They are rad af.