Baroness - Purple

Pitchfork 85

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.

The Quietus 0

"Nothing can truly prepare you for a brush with death. The event is [a] unique one, singular to the observer." - John Baizley, Baroness

In August 2012, a month after the release of their ambitious and well-executed double album Yellow & Green, Georgian sludge rockers Baroness were involved in a terrifying bus crash in Bath, England. Travelling from Southampton to the next show in very heavy rain, which seriously affected visibility, Baroness's tour bus careened through a guardrail and plunged 30 feet off a viaduct. Everyone aboard was injured but thankfully no one was killed. In the wake of this life-threatening event, John Baizley - Baroness's founding member, guitarist and vocalist - wrote for the band's website: "Our bus accident left indelible marks, external and internal, physical and mental, you name it. Each of the nine of us went through and continues to go through an entirely different, yet common experience."

Three years have passed, and during that time bassist Matt Maggioni and drummer Allen Bickle have left the band on good terms following their recuperation after both suffered fractured vertebrae in the crash. Baizley, who endured a two-and-a-half week hospital stay as a result of his broken bones, spent months in rehabilitation; but both he and Pete Adams (guitars/backing vocals) eventually decided to soldier on with Baroness, refusing to be defeated by brutal circumstance. “I spoke to [Metallica's] James Hetfield, who has also dealt with the fallout from a bus-related accident, and he said, "Life is going to be difficult for a while; but you'll be fine." And once I had done some physical therapy and played guitar again, I thought, 'Yes, I've got this. It's not over'", notes Baizley in the press release that accompanies his band's first post-accident album - and their fourth studio effort overall - Purple.

While it's not short of weighty emotional moments - most explicitly, the poignant and vulnerable 'If I Have To Wake Up (Would You Stop The Rain)' - Purple refuses to wallow in misery. Instead it finds positivity in the band's past situational misfortune and the songs surge with this forward vitality. Interestingly, given the personal difficulties prior to its creation, when it comes to the music, Purple sounds like a very natural follow-up to Yellow & Green.  Sadly the band didn't get to properly promote that bountiful record, which saw Baroness fully expand their horizons beyond classic rock-infused sludge metal following the critically acclaimed Blue Record, released in 2009. By fully incorporating their fondness for hard rock, indie, pop, alternative and folk into Baroness's established sludge paradigm, a more melodious, experimental and hook-hungry band emerged on Yellow & Green, with Baizley's scream-free vocals moving right to the foreground.

The sprawling nature of its predecessor has clearly been curtailed on the ten songs that comprise Purple. Two of which are merely soundscapes; 'Fugue' is a placid instrumental reprieve, while 'Crossroads of Infinity' is a rather pointless outro. Overall, however, this album can be fittingly described as a potent consolidation of the distinctive sounds that Baroness, sometimes exclusively, explored on both sides of their 2012 double disc, condensed to their most immediate forms.  'Chlorine & Wine', arguably the strongest track on the anthemic Purple, is a rousing rock song that naturally ebbs and flows between affecting, almost lullaby laments and Queen-esque grandstanding. Its concise and creative songwriting is indicative of Baroness's evolution to date, and Baizley's determined vocals backed by heartening gang chants makes for another passionate highpoint on an album with very few faults.  Prior to this, the first four songs - 'Morningstar', 'Shock Me', 'Try To Disappear', and 'Kerosene' - showcase the band's sharpened verse/chorus song craft, and do so in quick succession.  Baizley's bellowing vocals engage with the equally vibrant and affirmative instrumentation. Each player has a firmly defined role on this album, with the excellent new rhythm-section of Nick Jost and Sebastian Thomson (Trans Am), on bass/keyboards and drums respectively, adding plenty of accented textures and aggressive thrust to Adams and Baizley's twin-guitar thunder and their sparsely-used, yet highly effective harmonising leads.

Since he retired his lion's roar, Baizley's singing has been criticised for sounding one-dimensional from time to time. While he does have his technical limitations, he shrewdly plays to his strengths throughout Purple by investing plenty of passion into the catchy, chest-thumpin' refrains he has clearly spent time honing alongside his expressive turn of phrase. Baizley has matured further as a singer and a songwriter in the years following Yellow & Green; and as a lyricist he is never overly morose or literal here in how he broaches the accident and the physical and emotional pain experienced in its aftermath. However, while such maturity is firmly in place, the band's primal origins still flicker incandescently on occasion. The heat is felt on churning, broiling riffs of 'Morningstar' and the spiralling licks of 'Kerosene'. Both songs recall the band's untameable 2007 full-length debut Red Album, released back when Baroness and their fellow Georgians in Mastodon and Kylesa were fervently barging their way to the vanguard of sludge in the US. But the major difference is that in 2007, Baroness would have raged through numerous tangled movements. Here, and on the emphatic rush of 'Desperation Burns', they know how to confidently hold and release the reins of the mighty riff and it's corralled into a sensibly structured alternative rock song to great effect.

Purple is an album of firsts for Baroness: their first with Jost and Thomson's sterling input; their first for their own label Abraxan Hymns since leaving Relapse's stable; their first with famed producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Sleater-Kinney); and their first following near-death. It therefore acts as an essential rebirth for an important modern rock band whose sky-reaching career arc almost came crashing down in tragic fashion. But through great hardship and heartache comes a greater understanding and appreciation of the transience of life and the worthwhile beauty that does exist behind all the horror this world can inflict upon us without a second's notice. This experience of overcoming grave adversity and living to tell the tale exists at the thumping heart of Purple, and accordingly in the accomplished, passionate and fully mended band who has gifted it to us.

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