On 27th January, Meg Baird releases Furling, her highly anticipated fourth album under to be released her own name. Her last was Don’t Weigh Down the Light (2015). Along the way, she has made some beautiful collaborations – she joined forces with members of Comets on Fire and Assemble Head to form the moody and thunderous Heron Oblivion (2016), to which she leant her drumming and voice while, in the same year, Until You Find Your Green found her reunited with her sister Laura for an album of rustic natural intimacy. Then, in 2018, she collaborated with Mary Lattimore on the mesmerizingly hazy Ghost Forests (2018).
This new offering is described as an album that ‘most irreverently explores the span of her work and musical touchstones. It showcases her natural tether to ’60s English folk traditions. But it also reveals her deep love for soul balladry, the dubby Bristol atmospherics of Flying Saucer Attack, the solitary musings of Neil Young shackled to his piano deep in the foggy pre-dawn, the melancholy memory collage of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, and the delicious, Saturday-night promise of St. Etienne.’
The entire album was performed by Meg and her longtime collaborator, partner, and Heron Oblivion bandmate Charlie Saufley. Meg’s musical contributions throughout are extensive and finds her venturing beyond the musical confines of fingerstyle guitar, she also plays drums, mellotron, organs, synths, and vibraphone over her piano and guitar foundations.
Her latest album single is ‘Star Hill Song’ – said to evoke a loose, Hi Record groove swaying in the lazy West Coast breeze, as sunshine sonics fly like banners in magisterial folk-rock procession. The video for “Star Hill Song”, thoughtfully created by Meg Baird, acts as a visual epistle to the lush days of springtime, bursting with light and life. Regarding the process and impetus for the video, Meg notes, “I’m neither a person who knows how to make films–or sew–but creating this homespun video felt very much like getting lost in a freestyle needlework and quilting project.”
“I often think that music is a place where we can literally “put” or “save” things when there is no other space for them. All of the images I’ve stitched together here were squeezed from a sorely dying phone camera in my attempt to add life and flicker to them. And while they are images that mean a great deal to me–captured with eyes looking up close at things with love, care and devotion–I hope they leave plenty of open space for moods, thoughts and stories of your own.”
Pre-order your copy of Furling before the street date of January 27th – https://ffm.to/furling