In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is a female monster who dwells in the forest and feasts on children. This doesn’t necessarily mean she’s evil-- in some stories, she’s a benign or even helpful figure-- but she’s certainly mythical and definitely mysterious. For starry-eyed cosmic country-rock band Futurebirds, Baba Yaga is also a metaphor, for the rigors the Athens-based outfit endured while trying to locate a label to put out its stunning second record, and for the ambiguous darkness that peers inside the lush sprawl of their beautiful, foreboding songs.
Futurebirds have been honing this sound-- a loose-limbed tangle of reverbed guitars, hollered harmonies, and driving yet contemplative Southern rock rhythms-- over the course of two EPs, 2010’s full-length debut Hampton’s Lullaby, and countless gigs in support of kindred spirits like the Drive-By Truckers and Heartless Bastards. For Baba Yaga, they spent seven months sneaking in and out of recording sessions between tours, eventually amassing 30 songs. (Since there are currently five songwriters in the band, material tends to pile up over time.) Eventually the record was pared-down to 13 tracks, but after languishing for months without a label, Futurebirds began to worry whether its new record would ever be heard. The band decided to keep on touring, and share the songs with live audiences, in the hope that someone would notice. (Fat Possum later agreed to put out Baba Yaga.)
Baba Yaga is very much an “on tour” record; the controlled chaos of Futurebirds’ live shows translates on record like never before. You feel the energy, forgive any flubbed notes, and soak in the past-midnight revelry. Many tracks extend past the five-minute mark, with the excess padding coming from guitar solos stacked upon guitar solos, and boisterous sing-alongs allowed to go on for several extra beats. Baba Yaga nails the melancholy of trying to chase and pin down something that’s special and fleeting, because Futurebirds were clearly doing the same when recording these songs. This “something” might be best described as relief; Futurebirds’ twin obsessions on Baba Yaga are dysfunctional relationships and death, with the music acting as a communal salve against the private anguish documented in the lyrics.
Guitarist Thomas Johnson has said “the songs on this album seem to all come from a similar place," which explains the consistent voice on Baba Yaga in spite of the number of different writers. The group’s most prolific composer, Carter King, has the best knack for narrative details, outlining the “coffee beans and Ritalins” that keep the troubled couple at the center of “Virginia Slims” standing upright. In “Serial Bowls”, an infectious *Reckoning-*era R.E.M. bounce obscures a discomforting portrait of spiritual bankruptcy: “When the nurse saw me drop/ She said mama should’ve used that birth control/ because where my heart was supposed to be/ was like nothing they'd ever seen/ there was nothing/ but a smoking hole.” King tries to side-step the encroaching blackness that surrounds him on “Death Awaits” by going surfing, and finds Zen-like calm in the face of the inevitable: “Get rolled up in the wave, cuz death awaits/ and it’s a mean death, but it’s a clean death.”
King’s songs might shine the brightest, but Futurebirds is unmistakably a band. Each member makes valuable contributions: Johnson’s stormy guitar meltdown “Dig”, Daniel Womack’s beatific campfire ballad “Heavy Weights”, Payton Bradford’s heart-tugging “Keith and Donna” (who might be the only happy couple on Baba Yaga), and Brannen Miles’ jaunty folk strummer “The Light”. The only Futurebird who doesn’t write, Dennis Love, is the group’s most essential instrumentalist; his striking pedal-steel guitar lines cut through the din on Baba Yaga with the invigorating precision of Ralph Mooney soaring above Waylon Jennings and the Waylors. Take any member out of the equation and the captivating mess of Baba Yaga wouldn’t be splayed in precisely the right places. Perhaps Baba Yaga might’ve been more digestible if it had lost two or three songs. But for Futurebirds, the rough spots are kind of the whole point.
