Baroness ‘Gold and Grey’ Review: southern act sheds its metal skin in exchange of emotive anthems and experimental textures.
Baroness have slowly made an arc from a band associated with Southern sludge metal to something more vast and harder to define. Beginning with 2012’s double album Yellow and Green, they’ve embraced elements of 90s alternative and classic rock, offering widescreen sonic vistas that match frontman John Baizley’s gorgeous cover art for ornate beauty and detail.
2014’s Purple was equally anthemic and deeply personal, recounting Baizley and co’s harrowing survival of a near fatal car crash during their 2012 European tour. It upped their musical game while providing catharsis for the group’s shared trauma.
The band are back (with Baizley as the sole original member) with Gold and Grey, a 17 track opus that pushes them even further into grandiose rock god territory, and marks a new level of songcraft.
Returning producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) adds psychedelic textures and glittering soundscapes that makes for quirky yet accessible listening.
Front Towards Enemy is an opening barnburner in classic Baroness fashion, with industrial drums colliding with churning guitar and Baizley’s guttural wail.
After that things get slippery and chameleon-like, with the band morphing through a variety of styles: I’m Already Gone is a low-key rocker, while Seasons We Burn flirts with shoegaze in its rich strident textures, and Can Oscura tips its hat to krautrock and post-punk.
Gold and Grey also sees the band expanding their sonic palette like never before, from the piano flecked, life affirming anthem I’d Do Anything to the album’s menagerie of Brian Eno-esque instrumental interludes, while Emmett Radiating Light encroaches psych rock and country.
New guitarist and backup vocalist Gina Gleason is the album’s secret weapon, adding two-part harmonies that add a new dimension to the group, including the powerful Tourniquet and Throw Me An Anchor.
The latter is the album’s centerpiece, full of huge hooks, Smashing Pumpkins-ish dual guitar solos, and lyrics that could be about environmental collapse, a doomed relationship or both:
This is an emergency
The stars that shone between us
Were all in monochrome
This is an emergency
The last one out will pay
This is an emergency
But wait, there’s more! Borderlines is a phase-drenched prog epic that drips atmosphere, while album closer Pale Sun is a cinematic tour-de-force that has the sonic grandeur of vintage Pink Floyd.
Gold and Grey is a deep dish of rock, and requires patience and repeat listens to unveil all its charms. That’s not easy to do in today’s instant gratification and minute attention span enviroment, but it makes it all the more rewarding.
Baroness continue to fight the musical good fight, and truly understand the healing, meditative qualities a great rock song can bring. And Gold and Grey has those in spades, reinvigorating band and listener in the process.
