Sunset, the indie-pop recording project for Austin, TX native Bill Baird, will release it's fourth full-length, Gold Dissolves To Gray, on November 24, 2009, via Autobus Records. Baird first came into the spotlight as a founding member of Sound Team, the once on-the-verge group signed to Capitol Records and opening for the Arcade Fire. But when 2006 saw the band going their separate ways, Baird switched his focus to the solo work he’d been pursuing on the side. After self-releasing {{SUNSET}} and its instrumental companion, Silence!, in December ‘06 – and with the help of some friends – his once-side project began to take shape as a new band, taking its name from his early LP.
Releasing three albums in 2008 (Pink Clouds, Bright Blue Dream and The Glowing City), the project has gradually earned a reputation for its beautifully crafted lo-fi tracks, its ambitious dance between genres and styles, and its transcendence of earthly perspective. Praised as modern psychedelia at its finest, somewhere at the crossroads of “melodic pop bliss and twisted backwoods folk” (Exclaim!), Baird’s recent work is the kind which stops you in your tracks, blindfolds you, spins you around, turns you inside out and then strips the blindfold away to reveal a new world around you. Or rather, the same world, except now you’re seeing it through a prism of sound and light in which nothing looks quite the same. Baird’s DIY ethics and stripped down take on modern life make for a refreshingly clean feel, the kind of music which longs for headphone listening and live performance and leaves you feeling a little closer to the ground by the time you’re done – in the best way possible.
Baird is on tour right now testing out the new material. Check him in the fine cities below.
10/28 -- The Khyber, Philadelphia, PA
10/29 -- Skull Alley, Louisville, KY
11/12 -- Johnny Brenda's, Philadelphia, PA
Following-up the ltd. edition April 2009 Loveshines II 7", which Dusted's Still Single column dubbed "HUGE", is Sunset's fourth full length in two years, Gold Dissolves to Gray. The album is most similar in spirit to Bill Baird's eponymous solo debut {{{SUNSET}}} and the early Sound Team material, with a natural touch for blending analog electronics with folk song. Yet, it is the clearest and most matured display of Bill Baird's talents to date. Subtle and poetic beauty permeate songs like "Our Dreams Did Weave a Shade" and "Gold Dissolves to Gray." Baird's ability to tackle the "job" aspect of a songwriter in the tradition of greats like Woody Guthrie is as surprising as ever in the cleverly penned and wise "Garden of Eden" and "Civil War". "Fishtown", recorded for the Philadelphia recording-grant organization Weathervane, is like the the sort of Beach Boys Americana that might have happened if Van Dyke Parks had written to appeal to fans of Ralph Emerson rather than beach bums on acid trips. Yet Baird's love of aesthetically beautiful, shoegazey tracks and his ability to make wordless music sing a song as sweet as with words is not left behind on Gold Dissolves to Gray.
It comes as no surprise that Baird describes Sunset as a project “still very much in its formative stages, [which] will probably remain that way for the duration of the project.” The dynamic nature of his approach to songwriting leads to an always-evolving sound, one constantly reaching for its true shape yet never settling in one form.
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