Meg Baird - Furling

2023

A long-standing force in experimental, psych-informed folk, Meg Baird's solo albums have usually been showcases for her acoustic guitar-led songwriting, fleshed out with the help of many collaborators. Furling is a different story, as Baird's fourth completely solo album (and first since 2015's Don't Weigh Down the Light) is a self-produced affair on which Baird plays almost every instrument and often tries on styles, sounds, and arrangements that are new to her.

Evenly paced and free-flowing throughout, Furling matches familiar moments like the woozy, mellow strums of "Star Hill Song" or the haunted pedal steel swells of stormy acoustic number "The Saddest Verses" with songs that find Baird pushing beyond her comfort zone. Album opener "Ashes, Ashes" is one of these: a lengthy, lingering cloud of piano clusters, steady pushes forward from a dusty drum kit, and wordless vocal harmonies swirling around in the ether. It's one part Alice Coltrane's meditative brilliance, one part the bleary unfinished jamming of David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name, and it's a perfect introduction for an album that proceeds to wander various strange places without ever losing it's way. "Twelve Saints" is a sort of acid folk wall of sound, layering bells, piano, various electric and acoustic guitars, and Baird's always glistening voice into a lovely wash of sound and texture.

The comparatively spare "Wreathing Days" is stripped to ghostly piano and vocals, while "Will You Follow Me Home?" decorates a Neil Young-styled groove with Mellotron and subtle clicks of percussion. Despite the differing directions Baird takes track to track, Furling never feels like a mixed bag, primarily due to the control with which she moves through her songs. The softer acoustic folk tunes and heavier, more far-reaching dives into piano and densely stacked arrangement all feel like similar parts of a whole, and the album flutters by beautifully like an unbothered mind wandering through various thoughts on a sunny day.

Fred Thomas  AMG