Max Bien Kahn's 'Baby Green' Is a Sunlit Masterpiece of Four-Day Songcraft
The Sonic Breakdown
Max Bien Kahn was born in San Francisco and has lived in New Orleans since 2011, where he’s played tenor banjo in the trad-jazz outfit Tuba Skinny since 2012. Baby Green is his fifth solo album, co-produced with Ross Farbe of Video Age, who also recorded it — live, in New Orleans, across four days in the lead-up to Mardi Gras 2024. You can hear the deadline in the best possible way.
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Gina Leslie’s bass is round and forgiving, with Ray Micarelli’s drums tucked just behind it. Nothing is gridded; the band breathes as a unit because it was playing as one.
The Spatial Dynamics: Farbe’s live capture leaves air between the players rather than stacking them. Kunal Prakash’s electric guitar jangles off to one side, Cameron Snyder fills the middle with piano, harmonium, percussion and — on one lovely occasion — penny whistle. It’s a small-room sound that never feels thin.
Standout Performance
Matt Bell’s lap steel on “Skipping Stones.” Glide singled out that track as “delivering an album high point,” and the steel is why: it arrives late, says one thing, and leaves.
Why It’s Certified
⚡ The eight titles run from “Jay’n Bee Club” through “It Gets Easier (But It’s Never Easy)” to the closer “Sunrise,” where Paste heard Kahn’s “folk-singer habits” pulled into “a near-jazz swirl of unpredictability.”
🌈 Glide: “A low-stakes affair that pulls up a chair and happily lets you stay awhile, Max Bien Kahn’s Baby Green finds the artist grateful and thriving in his world.”
🌈 Paste called it “rock-steady, dependable” — which, on a record this generous, is the compliment it sounds like.