It seems almost destined by fate that Ray Sonder and Saxon Gable would meet, form a band and get married. Both Sonder and Gable grew up in beach towns on Australia’s east coast with parents who fed them musical diets of The Beatles and Nirvana. Both started writing songs in their University days and gave demos to their friends, and once they met after both moving to Berlin from Sydney, they were soon a pair – and formed Baby Smith.

In the last few years they’ve gigged, released a couple of EPs and now we have Lately, Love Is Dead, the duo’s debut album. It’s a record of dreamy, hazy love songs that, as their album title may suggest, have a dark underbelly burbling underneath.

Opening with the assured strut of Adored, it’s clear that the duo’s work over the last couple of years has paid dividends. Their sound is immensely confident and could easily sit next to fellow Antipodeans Royel Otis‘s brand of wistful romanticism. Despite the blissed out feel though, it’s clear that there are sadder undertones to Baby Smith’s sound than first appears – Adored’s lyrics deal with the perils of a one-sided relationship (“you only call me when you want to be adored” runs the wistful chorus).

That mood of almost heavenly sadness is imbued throughout the record. Limoncello River not only name-checks Fawlty Towers early in the song but also has the sort of hazily narcotic feel that Tame Impala have made their own. A track like Golden may sound gossamer-light, with flutes and squiggly synths embroidering the sound, but there’s also a melancholy underpinning everything.

Just when you’re settling into the groove, Sonder and Gable pull the rug from under you a bit in the second half of the record. There’s a quiet desperation to the title track, with its whispered chorus of “I wanna be pretty, I wanna be sought after” which, as Gable sings to the accompaniment of a lonely cello line, has a weirdly emotional impact. Have I Lost Myself Or My Sense Of Melody lives up to its excellent title by slowly becoming more discordant and chaotic, while the languid bossa nova of Don’t Look Down makes for a perfect summer listen.

The only quibble would be that, with a couple of exceptions, it would be nice to hear a bit more variety, musically speaking. There’s a definite template at work, and over the course of a full album, the dreamy, hazy atmospherics mean that the songs tend to drift into each other somewhat. While there are no bad tracks on Lately, Love Is Dead, you do sometimes yearn for a couple of songs with a bit more bite to them.

That’s a matter for Baby Smith’s future though. As an opening gambit, this is an album which makes for a good introduction for the duo – a fully realised debut, full of confidence and verve that promises even better things to follow in the years to come.