After two albums of guitar distortion and atmospheric sounds, a stunning folk-inspired alternative
It began with a trip to Italy in 2000. Toledo, Ohio based singer-songwriter Jessica Bailiff was already an established recording artist who had released two albums filled with guitar noise and hazy backwards recordings. A friend there introduced her to something new. Bailiff had an appreciation for Nick Drake and Syd Barrett, but this is altogether different. Vashti Bunyan, Anne Briggs, Jackson C. Frank—music from the British folk scene of the sixties and early seventies. It would influence her next solo album. And the next.
Bailiff began playing guitar seriously in her twenties. She played in The Jane and began making solo recordings in the mid-nineties using a 4-track. Bailiff sent demos to the Kranky label, who offered to put out an album. Her first two releases: Even in Silence (1998) and Hour of the Trace (1999) were made with Alan Sparhawk from Low in his Duluth studio. These two albums introduced her distinctive sound—heavy in electric distortion with faint vocals buried in the murk. She would make her third, self-titled album on her own.
Number three is intimate with acoustic guitar and eerie piano. Bailiff plays most of the instruments herself, including a violin-uke, and the music is gripping and intense with folk traces and electronic noise. Only “Disappear” serves as a reminder of the sound of the first two records. What’s it all about? On her brainwashed.com website she admits the songs are about “…stagefright, dreams, loss of creative energy/desire, love & time, living in the same place all your life, ghosts, near-death experiences, etc….” A tad disturbing but not as disturbing as the scary doll photo she used for the cover of her fourth album Feels Like Home. Yikers!