Revisited: Jessica Bailiff - Jessica Bailiff (2002)

Revisited: Jessica Bailiff - Jessica Bailiff (2002)
(Revisisted is a feature in which I rediscover old albums in my collection and see how my opinions of them have changed)
The problem with trying to review one of my favorite albums is that the words to describe them seem to escape me. I find myself in this position now. While there are many words that can be used to describe Jessica Bailiff's self-titled album -- beautiful, passionate, personal, ethereal, dreamy, psychedelic, heavenly, etc -- none of them seem to work quite as well as I want them to. So I'll just resort to storytelling. I'll call this one Jessica Bailiff: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love This Album.

It was the spring of 2003. Or maybe summer, I don't remember. It was hot outside and I went to a year round art college in Arizona, so it could've been any season since they're almost all the same there. Between classes I went to the computer lab to partake in the usual routine of finishing design projects last minute while listening to songs on the then functional Epitonic.com (which soon became defunct, and then years later became functional again, and now looks defunct again). I would search for artists I already liked and then view the websites recommendations for similar artists, often times going to the similar artists and checking out their similar artists and so on and so on until I ended up at an artist that sounded nothing like who I started with.

But one fateful day, sometime in 2003, in the middle of a maze of recommendations I stumbled upon Jessica Bailiff's page, where the song "Disappear", among others, were available to stream. One listen to that song and I was hooked. It was the most haunting, disturbingly enchanting thing I've heard...perhaps ever. The kind of song that just makes your surroundings seem to fade away and replaces them with the dead air of another realm. For five and a half minutes, I didn't feel like I was in a computer lab that stank of the wretched body odor of your average Game Design or Computer Animation student, I felt like I was floating at the bottom of an ocean, or maybe to another dimension altogether. It was one of the few times I can remember being truly moved by a piece of music.

Surprisingly, the whole album had that effect -- the effect that made it seem as if it could not have been recorded on this planet -- and it made for the perfect chillout listen. Still, the album hadn't really hit me just yet. I listened to it very often, yet barely considered it when thinking of the best albums I purchased that year. And I listened to it all throughout 2004 and 2005, my musical tastes changing drastically in that time. Listening to less and less indie-rock and replacing it with more and more metal and classic rock and other, more exciting genre's than what indie rock was offering at that time. Yet still I kept coming back to this album. Using it to fall asleep to or study to, the most perfect soundtrack to such things but in the best way possible.

It wasn't until sometime in 2006 where I -- recent college graduate, still in Arizona, still hot all the time, working to pay the bills, working to find a job that means more to me than something that just pays the bills -- came to realize that I've listened to this album more so than any other album in my collection. And also realizing, probably for the first time, just how incredibly good it was. And not just "Disappear". I noticed how "Swallowed" was so effective in how it introduces the album, aptly titled for how it envelopes you in its sound. I realized that "Mary" was every bit as haunting and effective as "Disappear". I fell in love with the very subtle sitar use in "The Hiding Place", and the reversed drum hits in "Time Is An Echo". There was so much to like that had never come to my attention until then. Maybe I had noticed before somewhere in the back of my mind, but now, for some reason, perhaps with the openness of a mind newly freed from the stresses of college, it was all clear.

As I write this, I have yet to buy another album with or by Jessica Bailiff. I'm almost afraid to ruin the effect of the perfection she's reached here. Sometime down the road, I'll more than likely pick up her other albums and her Clear Horizon work, and maybe they won't be quite as good, but at least I'll still have this one to come back to. The same way I've been coming back to it for years. One of the few constants of my collection. Old reliable.



"Disappear"

Links:
Jessica Bailiff at Brainwashed
MySpace