Lord is no riot grrrl on Baby Blue. Neither is she a barefoot Joan Baez folkie or a whiny Lilith Fair type. The album, like her last full-length studio release, Got No Shadow, is a collaboration with Nick Saloman of Bevis Frond, who penned 9 of the 14 songs and co-wrote two others.
And there isn't a throwaway in the bunch. Baby Blue is a seductive mix of 1970s folk rock and straight-ahead thrum, with Lord's sweet, breathy vocals stealing the show. Lovers of jangly guitar -- reminiscent of R.E.M. before they went MTV on us -- should dig this. And what would a Mary Lou Lord release be without a few imaginative covers? She provides a pair from 1971: Badfinger's title cut and Pink Floyd's "Fearless," on which she employs the same deadpan vocal delivery that made the original so spooky, living up to the song's title and then some.
