Guitar Girls

June 1, 2006 | Filed Under Music 

It’s true–my parents have terrible taste in music. It’s something I suffered through as a child. I found myself listening to either the oldies stations (i.e. the same 20 songs over and over), my dad’s classical stuff (boring!), or Mom’s…*shudder*…Julio Iglesias. There were no classic gems in their record collection–just a bunch of watered-down crap. And if it hadn’t been for the guidance my brother provide me, who knows what might have become of me.
Even if they had been hip to good music, there’s little chance my parents would have been into the Pacific Northwest’s folkstress Linda Perhacs. Her only LP, Paralellograms (1970), was recently rediscovered after being buried in obscurity through a few reissues, starting with a bootleg CD of the original vinyl released in 2003. An expanded edition, with demos and such (five previously unreleased tracks), was more recently remastered and reissued by Brooklyn’s The Wild Places label in 2005. Her gentle, flowers-in-the-hair folk is liberally enriched with psychedelia. There is a somewhat ominous/sinister tone to some of the songs, and except in cases of the few upbeat numbers like “Paper Mountain Man,” calling her material “trippy” is neither an exaggeration nor a cop-out. It’s beautiful, strange and manages not to verge too close on hippy-dippy.

Relatively speaking, Bridget St. John is substantially less obscure. Her 1969 debut album, Ask Me No Questions, was the first to be released on the late John Peel’s short-lived Dandelion Records label. It was reissued in recent years by Cherry Red, along with her other two albums for Dandelion. With a deep, sort of husky voice which reminds me of the VU’s Nico (with less of an accent) and some nimble finger-picking reminiscent of Nick Drake (she was friends with him, apparently), this album is filled with mostly sad songs–the kind of Pink Moon melancholy I prefer in my folk music. There are a few brighter spots, one of which I’m including here, but on the whole the material is wistful and gray. It’s perfect for watching those dead leaves blowing down the street in the late Fall.

And then there’s the one practically nobody has heard of until just recently. Sibylle Baier recorded an album as a young woman in Germany in the early 70’s. It was recorded at her home and never released. As her son states in the liner notes for the first official release of Colour Green (2006, Orange Twin), “Sibylle is a star who chose to shine for her friends and family instead of the whole world.” It’s a recovered gem of a record, for sure. Soft, lower register vocals (again, a bit similar to Nico) with some interesting phrasings are paired with sparse acoustic guitar. It was apparently written and recorded during a particularly difficult time in this woman’s life. This is evident in songs like “The End,” which tell stories of loss and the dissolution of friendships. Others like “William” and “Forget About” provide a little comfort and hope in the midst of young Sibylle’s confusing discovery period. Most of these songs, intimate and lonely, are reflections on memories, passing time and entering adulthood. Best of all, they exhibit something not often found these days–beautiful honesty.

Linda Perhacs: “Chimacum Rain” [MP3]

Bridget St. John: “Lizard-Long Tongue Boy” [MP3]

Sibylle Baier: “Forgett” [MP3]

Comments

One Response to “Guitar Girls”

  1. mianfeinàn on March 2nd, 2008 1:32 am

    “Parallelograms” truly is an impressive record. I had to search and wait for a long time after a listen to “Moons and Cattails” but it was so, so worth it.

    Why the record failed to impress upon release in 1970 is really no mystery. Its ambient sound is really so different from even the most inaccessible work from other singer/songwriters during the 1970s that it would have been very difficult to make much of.

    I disagree with your calling “Paper Mountain Man” upbeat. It is really, as I see it, an extremely cerebral satire of hippie culture that is as remarkable for its instrumentation as for its lyrics.

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