Shtick up

SONG AND DANCE MAN Inscrutable crooner Baby Dayliner is getting serious.

Photo: Marion Ruszniewski

Here’s what to expect at a Baby Dayliner show: A tall, pale man, with the perfectly jutting cheekbones of a model, sways and gyrates to programmed beats. He punctuates his lines with a clenched fist or a palm to the chest. Alone onstage with his eyes closed, he comes across as earnest but slightly awkward, like a karaoke crooner or someone singing in the shower. His lyrics are sentimental, yet peppered with hip-hop slang.

If all this makes you skeptical about the 29-year-old solo artist’s sincerity, he wouldn’t blame you. “Frankly, if I heard that some guy was doing a one-man show like this, I probably wouldn’t go see it,” the singer says, while sitting in a West Village café.

This is partly false modesty, though, because plenty of people do go; the Chelsea native, born Ethan Marunas (the alias comes from Big Daddy Kane’s old codename), has amassed an impressive local following. He regularly headlines the Mercury Lounge on weekends, eliciting as many incredulous giggles as swoons. The former reaction is appropriate for his somewhat hammy 2002 debut, High Heart and Low Estate. But his new disc, Critics Pass Away, could silence the laughter, or at least redirect it.

Critics is a strikingly cohesive and mature release that outshines its predecessor at every step. The songs are catchier, the jokes less gimmicky, and the production—a lush, funky blend of dance-pop, soul and house— more elegant; Marunas’s rich, languid baritone holds the diverse material together. Moreover, the lyrics have a solid core of self-reflection that’s disarming and sometimes even painful. A standout track is “The Way You Look Tonight”—not the Kern-Fields chestnut, but an original in which the narrator vacillates between lust and remorse. “At Least,” the album’s opener, is bold and show-tuney, anchored by a big, brassy synth refrain. The song surveys the end of a life, Sinatra-style: “Checking out of this hotel, yeah, think I truly paid / Hope I tip the owner plenty, enough that he may get on his way.”

There are laughs to be had on the record too—“At Least” laments the plight of “a heart without a homey”—but they’re subtler than before. “I think you can have humor in music without being at war with yourself,” Marunas states. “My songs have a good dose of humor in them, but not irony.” The singer is equally adamant that his strangely unguarded stage manner isn’t meant as a gag. “However it is that I perform, I can’t really help it,” he says. “Some people say it’s novelty, and that’s fine. But if they see that, it’s probably something they want to see.”

And Marunas should know—by now, he’s examined the art of performance from all sides. A graduate of LaGuardia High School, where he studied classical music, he has worked as Baby Dayliner since 1999. Playing downtown clubs such as the now-defunct Brownies, he quickly found a cultish audience, which he has built on ever since. “My crowd is what gives veracity to my performances,” he says. “People cut loose at my shows.”

The MC Aesop Rock was among Marunas’s early supporters, having been a fan of his work in several pre-Dayliner acts in the mid-’90s. “When you see him live, part of you wants to laugh, but another part thinks, He’s a good singer!” Aesop says. “The way he writes is admirable; the songs have emotional highs and lows, and that’s something a lot of people can’t do.”

Marunas also focuses on his songcraft, rather than any overarching concept of the project. “Some people take it as high performance art, but I’m pretty straight-up,” he says with a shrug. He pauses, then adds for emphasis,“Even if it seems I’m not, I am.”

A performer who may be on the brink—an upcoming Bowery Ballroom date caps a series of high-profile gigs—he’s clearly grappled with the range of reactions his act provokes, and has gotten past them. “I’m not going to stop doing Baby Dayliner,” he affirms. “It’s just something I have to do.”

Baby Dayliner opens for the Ark at Bowery Ballroom Wednesday 28. Critics Pass Away is out now on Brassland.