It is intimidating thing to sit down with a new Baroness record and try to understand its contours. There’s just so much to take into account. This Savannah DIY metal band turned scattered progressive rock collective are an entirely different beast than they were back when Red came out in 2007 and every bike messenger in West Philly was rocking their shirts; or when Blue dropped in 2009 and hipsters caught wind of their promise; or when 2012’s Yellow & Green elevated them to a new tier of progressive acclaim; or when 2015’s Grammy-nominated Purple presented a band who had quite literally been through hell, and returned bearing iridescent riffs. With their fifth album, Gold & Grey, the shape-shifting outfit hands us the latest frayed chapter in their evolution, its words and notes illuminated like a medieval manuscript. Demons still hide in the margins, but divinity radiates.
Baroness have lived many musical lives since the band first formed in 2003, and cheated death in 2012, when a terrible bus crash derailed their ascent and led to the departure of two members, drummer Allen Blickle and bassist Matt Maggioni. Seven years on from that traumatic accident, they’ve experienced a great deal of healing and growth—both planned and unexpected. This process was first explored on Purple, a barely-closed wound of an album that concealed a certain rawness of spirit, and now, on Gold & Grey, it’s mellowed into acceptance, the scars still prominent, but smoothed with time.
The addition of new guitarist and backing vocalist Gina Gleason completes a lineup that includes bassist Nick Jost, drummer Sebastian Thomson, and vocalist and guitarist John Baizley (an accomplished artist who’s equally deft with a paintbrush as a sheet of composition paper). It can’t be easy to be the new kid in a band with so much history behind it, but Gleason is a natural fit. She makes her presence felt from the onset in the album’s ambitious guitar work; her vocals on tracks like the strange, dreamy album closer “Pale Sun” add both lightness and depth, and harmonize beautifully with Baizley's earnest croon.
Gold & Grey is not quite a double album, though it sure flirts with the idea. Seventeen tracks span just over an hour, with a startling amount of variance between them. Synthesizers play an important role, but so does old-fashioned improvisation; here, Baroness convince their disparate influences to gel beautifully without lapsing into the homogeneity (or self-indulgent drudgery) that remains a common defect of long, proggy albums. The second half is noticeably quieter and spookier than the more bombastic first half, easing down gently into more melodic and even acoustic fare. Post-rock, space rock, prog rock, psychedelic rock, grungy Alice in Chains-eyeing hard rock—it’s all here, and since it’s Baroness, it works.
The album narrowly avoided being dubbed Orange; as a color, orange signifies oversaturation, an upbeat brightness verging on mania. The final title is far more fitting, as Gold & Grey is none of those things; its palette is muted, a muddle of earth and sky tones. Its lighter moments are sunny but not blinding; its tempo generally treads a middle road, even on more sprightly tracks like “Throw Me an Anchor,” with its splash of noisy synth, or in the barely restrained acid freakout of “Can Oscura.”
Baroness have never been afraid of a big rock riff, and they’ve made room for radio-ready songs like opening track “Front Towards Enemy” and “Broken Halo” (underpinned by an immensely satisfying classic heavy metal stomp) on an album littered with stranger offerings. More outré songs like the gorgeous, raw-boned acoustic ballad “I’d Do Anything,” the ghostly electronic wash of “Blankets of Ash,” and the dewy minimalism of “Assault on East Falls” add texture and balance, ensuring that, while Baroness have certainly matured, they’re still plenty weird. Spitfire percussion on “Seasons” hints to the band’s more metallic past; one riff sounds like a spiritual cousin to “March of the Fire Ants,” by fellow Georgia metal turned prog luminaries Mastodon. “Pale Sun,” with its space rock phasers and epic vocal harmonies, feels like both a primal scream and a sign of what’s to come.
All this is a far cry from the Baroness of a decade ago, churning out sludgy doom salvos in sweaty basements. If you’d cryogenically frozen a fan from back then and handed them a copy of Gold & Grey upon defrost, they’d be more than a little confused. Fortunately, Baroness trust us to grow along with them.
Buy: Rough Trade
