Release Date: Sep 20, 2011
Genre(s): Folk, Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Alternative Folk
Record label: Drag City
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Since Espers' Meg Baird released her debut solo offering, Dear Companion, in 2007 she's worked at transforming herself into a songwriter of distinction. Dear Companion was a collection of well-chosen covers that contained but two originals. Seasons on Earth is the mirror image of that recording. Baird contributes eight of her own tunes here, and includes two lovely -- if unusual -- cover choices.
On her first album, Dear Companion, Meg Baird—also of the band, Espers—was not just a solo artist, she was solitary. That companion she speaks of in the title was the songs, most of them covers or traditional folk tunes. The album used only her voice and her guitar (or dulcimer) and the results were beautiful, if accidentally confessional. We learn about Baird on that album by stumbling upon her singing those songs.
Here's a great practical joke you can play on that one record-collector friend of yours who's constantly getting himself all worked into a lather over over the latest limited-edition, vinyl-only reissue of some late-'60s/early-'70s psych-folk obscurity with either a hirsute gent or flower-bedecked lady on the cover and a wealth of gently moody acoustic ballads. Play him a track or two from Seasons on Earth (even the title probably evokes enough hippie-era mysticism to get him excited) by Meg Baird. Hell, you can even show him the CD booklet, which shows, among other images, a longhaired, bluejean-clad Baird peeking past multi-colored curtains as a strand of sunlight comes through the window.
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