It's been almost four years since Baroness’ last record, 2012’s Yellow & Green. That 18-song, 75-minute double album found the onetime sludge group making calmer, more melodic rock music, and seemed to presage a crossover. There was energy around the band, a palpable sense of momentum. But a month or so after the release of the record, Baroness got into a bus crash while on tour in England. It was a serious accident, a slide off the road, that stalled the Yellow & Green roll-out and almost ended the band. It was jarring enough that drummer Allen Blickle and bassist Matt Maggioni, who both suffered fractured vertebrae, ended up leaving the group.
There was emotional and psychological healing, as well as bones that had to be reset: A photo of the banged-up band surfaced and frontman and visual artist (and the group's poet and beating heart) John Baizley said he was close to having his arm amputated. But he healed, as did longtime guitarist Peter Adams. After the accident, Baizley wrote an amazing letter reaffirming his commitment to Baroness and music and art in general before he and Adams went on tour with new members, bassist/keyboardist Nick Jost and drummer Sebastian Thomson. Their shows after the accident were powerful—even the calmer Yellow & Green songs had a magnetic, life-affirming force.
Shortly before Y&G's release, before the accident, I interviewed Baizley. He told me he wanted Yellow & Green’s cover art, like the songs themselves, to reflect the feeling of the moment before or after a disaster. It’s eerie rereading his words now: "A lot of what I tackled lyrically or conceptually with [Y&G] is present on first glance but has... this implication of horror, or 'this is the moment before a car crash,' or the moment after a car crash. It seemed a little bit more engaging and interesting to me to consider those moments before, those moments after, rather than the ease and bluntness that comes with graphic violence or obvious, terrifying things." In a very real-life way, Purple, their first studio album since the accident, has ended up doing this, too.
Purple is the color of fresh bruises. It's also the combination of Red and Blue, which makes sense musically for those familiar with the group's albums of those names. These are some of the biggest, strongest songs Baroness have written; it's rock music that folds in their more metal leanings, along with something more delicate and spare. The hooks and melodies are their best. It also marks a number of firsts for the band. They're releasing it themselves on their new Abraxan Hymns imprint, and instead of recording with John Congleton, who produced the last couple of albums, they worked with Dave Fridmann, best known for his longtime collaboration with Flaming Lips (and you'll notice a larger presence of psychedelic keyboards throughout). It's also the first album to feature the new lineup, the same group as that first tour after the accident, and at this point they play together like longtime vets.
It’s shorter and more precise than Yellow & Green, with 10 songs in 43 minutes. The opener "Morningstar" rips into the thoughtful synths of "Shock Me", before that song, too, starts to burn. "Shock Me"'s an elegant song about being shocked into a new reality, about bad dreams coming true, about going into battle without proper preparation. On one level it feels like a song about the struggle and battle of day-to-day living, but this isn't dour or sad music: In fact, Baizley sounds thankful for the clearer, sharper vision personal tragedy's afforded him.
Songs like "Kerosene" and "Desperation Burns" nod to heat or flames, as do many of the lyrics. There are also lyrics about breathing and disappearing, doctors and spines and pills and death. The excellent, epic first single "Chlorine & Wine", features a harmonizing breakdown after a gentler piano bridge that seems to signal survival. In it, the entire band sings (or, shouts really): "Please don't lay me down/ Under the rocks where I found/ My place in the ground/ A home for the fathers and sons." These feel like war stories, or more aptly, stories from some people who feel ecstatic to be alive.
Baizley likes to tell stories through his cover art as well. On the sleeve of Purple, four women huddle together in what looks like the cold, with calm dogs and falcons by their sides. There are some mice (food for the birds) and nails (tools for building). There's a full moon, too, as well as blooming flowers and bees and berries and honey (the promise of Spring). The picture, which seems to be referenced in the lyrics to "Morningstar", communicates the hardiness of spirit it takes to live through tougher times and emerge hopeful. It's easy enough to see the four band members reflected in these four women. Here they are, alive and astonished, and here is this record.
