Baird’s Transportive Storytelling Shines On Dreamy ‘Darkness Of The Night’
VIA EQT (MASEGO, SMINO, BERHANA, JPEGMAFIA)
| PRAISE FOR BAIRD “Can’t stop listening to ‘Easy On Them Turns'” Complex/Pigeons & Planes “somewhere between electronic maestro, effervescent lounge singer, and multi-instrumentalist mastermind” DJBooth “Baird remains one of the most creative figures in LA’s burgeoning music scene thanks to his genre-spanning production and consistently imaginative visuals.” Earmilk “the energy is tangible…addictive” A1234 “infectious” Lyrical Lemonade “Bossa Nova meets stripped back indie-pop” Alt Citizen “poetic, sweet, heartfelt” Ones To Watch |
On the heels of a sold-out LA show supporting Role Model, Baird, shares new single/video “Darkness of the Night” via EQT Recordings (Masego, Smino, Berhana, JPEGMAFIA). Listen/watch HERE.
Inspired by the storytelling perspective of legends like John Prine, “Darkness of the Night” is a more mellow offering than October’s “Easy On Them Turns” which made fans at Pigeons & Planes, KCRW, Ones To Watch, SPIN, and more. The track is written from the perspective of a woman leaving her husband, pulsed forward by a driving, addictive beat and playfully buoyant, textured melody. The video plays with time and space, leaving the watcher to figure out if Baird is running towards us or away from us.
Of the story behind his latest single, Baird shares: “‘Darkness of the Night’ is the story of a woman leaving her husband. It’s not sung from my perspective. Actually, it’s a story from my family. I started writing it around the time when John Prine died. I was talking with my friend about how well Prine writes from other people’s perspectives and my friend was like ‘how come you never try that?’ So I thought I should.” He continues, “The drums felt really visual to me, like you could picture the linoleum kitchen counter where she left the note. The chords felt like holding your breath and quietly closing the front door. ‘Darkness..’ was one of those rare occasions when the guitar lick and the lyrics just seemed to land in my lap together. I got the idea for the story and just made up the parts I didn’t know for sure.”
Of the video, he says, “The video was pretty improvised. My friend happened to be in town for two days with a good camera from a commercial he was hired to shoot. He hit me the day before and so I went for a run and came up with the idea right then. The morning of, we decided to drive out 3 hours into the desert and shoot there. Honestly, the Prius almost didn’t make it back.”
Musically, Baird walks the line between acoustic songwriting and electronic production, inspired in part by the sounds and timbres wafting through the airs of the three cities he’s recently called “home” – Baltimore, where he grew up, Mexico City, where he spent a post-grad immersive sojourn, and Los Angeles, where he now resides. Taking cues from an eclectic range of genre-melding musical auteurs, Baird shares Panda Bear’s sense of enthralling, textural songwriting, the whimsical, surfing-through-radio-stations collage approach of Jai Paul and the restless, boundless creativity of Arthur Russell. Charmingly messy and consciously imperfect, Baird condenses all of his influences into 2-3 minutes masterpieces with seemingly off-handed effortlessness, stay tuned for more.
“Darkness of the Night” by Baird is out now, buy/stream it here.
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