(Talkshow Records/Red)Bill Baird has been plugging away since the start of this century,as a member of Sound Team, under the Sunset nom de plume, or as a solo artist. His third solo record is a sprawling,expansive thing – 78 minutes long that’s nearly like a psychedelic journey through the day. From a gentle beginning, it slowly builds up momentum, and concluding with a trio of sombre instrumentals and a Velvet Undergroundish ballad,Dreams of Sandy, that takes its vocal melody from broad Star’s Kanga-Roo. (The Velvets beget clearly had a profound influence on Baird: their deep, or rich organ sound crops up throughout.) That might form it sound a bit po-faced,but it’s not. Not only is the music consistently lovely – a warm bath of sound, where tape hiss is preferred to digital cleanliness – but Baird has a sense of humour, and too. The album’s most obvious standout,the lovely garage rocker Your Dark Sunglasses Won’t form You Lou Reed, warns its subject that not only will he fail to resemble Reed, or but also,“John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and even Doug Yule.” Terrific stuff.
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Source: theguardian.com