The first thing that hits you is the voice. Simultaneously full and fragile; assured, but with a distinctive, backnote graze that runs along it like barbs on a feather shaft, it sounds, at times, as if it’s ghosting itself. As well as lending textural gravitas to pretty much anything Meg Baird chooses to sing, it’s the perfect instrument for this collection of self-penned songs that appear, on first listen, to be haunted by the past.
Indeed, as we begin, you could be forgiven for thinking that “Counterfeiters” and “I Don’t Mind” were in fact the opening of a new album by Baird's former band, Espers. There are familiar chordal chimes and a pleasingly modal drone that recall an earlier time – somewhere around 2008 via 1968. It soon becomes clear, however, that this is not an album about looking back, it is one about moving away. The tones, texture and raw emotion contained within its wordless centrepiece, “Leaving Song”, are a good indication of the character throughout, one that is stepping over the threshold and casting a glance over its shoulder before pressing on and heading off.
This is also an album with beauty stitched into its very fabric. The elaborate vocal melodies are, at times, heart-stopping (“Mosquito Hawks”, “Back to You”) and the backing fuller and more lush than one might expect. This is played to particularly good effect on the Nick Drake-esque “Good Directions” and the building, incoming tide of “Even the Walls Don’t Want You to Go”. It’s a definite shift in sound for Baird, one that is steeped in her own move from Philadelphia to the sunnier climes of California and which marries melancholy with a sanguine calm. A collection about loss and leaving this may be, but it’s also one that understands the corollary of such momentum – bittersweet memories and a fresh start.
Overleaf: listen to "Counterfeiters"
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