REVIEW: Baroness — Gold & Grey
Gold & Grey is Baroness’s fifth studio album and the final instalment in the ‘colours’ series that has defined the band’s discography since the Red Album in 2007. A welcome announcement since, with Gold & Grey, it seems the Georgia quartet has outgrown the formula.
Less instantaneously catchy and anthemic than 2015’s Purple, Baroness are clearly aiming for depth over immediate impact on Gold & Grey. Perhaps this is why it took me a couple of listens to really fall in love with what John Baizley and the gang are doing here. The musicianship and songcraft are more accomplished than they’ve ever been. Look no further than the masterful arrangement on ‘Seasons’. The song flits so comfortably from winding guitar grooves to blast beats before melting together for an intricate crescendo finish, it’s Baroness at their most confident and dynamic. Tourniquet proves that the band is using every effect in the book to elevate their playing. Chugging riffs are interspersed with shimmering guitar passages, drum fills and vocal harmonies before fading into the extended outro of ‘Anchor’s Lament,’ replete with forlorn group vocals, piano and strings. The two tracks together create something that is hard-hitting and dreamy in equal measure, which gets to the heart of what ‘gold and grey’ is all about.
The two colours are the perfect visualisation for the record. The interplay between light and shadow is wonderful. The painting on its cover, easily Baizley’s best artwork for any album by any band, reflects this in ravishing detail; a pickaxe, nails and spears lie amongst amber coloured flowers and birds. We really get the sense of a delicate balance of elegance and grit that Baroness have crafted particularly in recent years. See also the gorgeous choral vocals that refuse to be buried in Blankets of Ash, and continue to flourish in Emmett: Radiating Light. At the midpoint of the album these tracks have the feeling of an intermission, and one is anxious to hear how the record will continue to deliver in the second act of its sixty one minute run.
What follows is another ballad, Cold-Blooded Angels, which — despite some engaging lyrics and backing vocals from Baizley’s nine-year-old daughter — left me slightly less convinced that I’d love the latter half of the album. The album’s production has somewhat divided critics, and I’m somewhat divided on the issue too. In truth, certain aspects of Baroness’s production have often troubled me, particularly on the drums. I was pleased that Gold & Grey seems to have troubleshot the hi-hat which, to my ears at least, has had somewhat of a damp sizzle to it on previous releases. However, this arguably seems to have been at the expense of a bunch of other instruments. I’m not saying the production is bad, it sometimes just feels slightly unclear where the band wants everything to fit in the complex mix. All too often it feels hard to organically relax into the quality songwriting of tracks like ‘Broken Halo.’ My other gripe with the album is its interlude tracks, particularly ‘Sevens’ and ‘Assault on East Falls.’ They answer the question of why the album has seventeen tracks yet only clocks in at slightly longer than an hour, but that is about all they explain and I’m not convinced they add much that isn’t already bountifully on offer elsewhere.
‘Can Obscura’ fades in intriguingly, and reminds the listener that the bass has a much greater role to play on here than other Baroness projects, but it too is a two minute interlude and a bit of a head-scratcher to boot, since it doesn’t really try to blend with any of the tracks either side of it. Upon first listen I assumed it must have been a sonic palette-cleanser to usher in a tonal shift for the epilogue of the album, not sure the lead single ‘Borderlines’ delivers this. This isn’t to say that Borderlines is a bad track; indeed, in retrospect it proves to be a very effective mission statement of what to expect on Gold & Grey: more elaborate grooves, textures and layers, without being too dense or too flashy, where any instrumental idea can fade into the background or rush into centre stage at any moment.
Unease about the album’s production does not tarnish the fact that the chemistry, ambition and talent of every band member is absolutely consistent here. Remarkable considering this is the band’s first album with lead guitarist Gina Gleason. ‘Throw Me An Anchor’ is probably the most direct barn-burner track of the bunch, while its follow-up, ‘I’d Do Anything’ is a stripped back tearjerker that proves that Gleason is a perfect fit for the band vocally as well as instrumentally.
Lyrically, some listeners may feel the band becomes cloying at times, but Baizley’s vocals are so earnest and so well backed up that you believe every word. I love the imagery in Broken Halo, and I think it still would’ve worked if they’d used one or two fewer effects pedals. I find this issue on ‘Throw Me An Anchor’ too. ‘Pale Sun’ is a fittingly fluorescent final track, if perhaps not the most memorable conclusion to an album I’ve ever heard.
In so many ways, Gold & Grey is the sum of everything that’s come before, everything the band has been through on and off-record — line-up changes, near fatal bus crashes, the tedious agony of physiotherapy — they’re carrying it all with them and making something great out of it, in some ways more so than they did on Purple. For me at least, metal music is chiefly concerned with channeling dejection into something brilliant, and not many bands do this as well as Baroness do. Perhaps they are still constrained by certain aspects of the formula they have carved out for themselves over a decade and a half, however Baroness have pulled off a serious feat of alchemy on this record, and left behind a glorious question mark of where they will end up next.
