Music sometimes just falls out of the sky.  We were checking out The Decemberist’s Colin Meloy’s book, “Wildwood,” at Amazon when we noticed that Meloy and his illustrator wife, Carson Ellis, had included (on Amazon) a suggested music playlist for the book.  And in that list we discovered, for the first time, Sibylle Baier.  And now we can’t stop listening.

Allmusic Guide has this back story on Baier and her lone album, “Colour Green” on Orange Twin Records:

German singer/songwriter Sibylle Baier’s one contribution to the early-’70s underground folk scene was recorded in her home on an old reel-to-reel machine. Her earnest and stoic vocals, as well as her reflective compositions, were comparable to contemporaries such as Nico, Vashti Bunyan, and Anne Briggs, but the accomplished actress, painter, dancer, and seamstress chose to focus on her growing family rather than pursue a career in music. In 2004, her son lent a copy of his mother’s home recordings to Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis, who in turn saw that it found its way to Athens, GA, record label Orange Twin. Colour Green was made available to the world the following year.

Ya gotta love a mother with priorities and a son that prioritizes payback.  We have just begun to catch up on Baier’s songs, but so far they are intimate one-acts on life’s rich pageant, with lyrical depth to match.  Imagine, if you will, Sylvia Plath singing and playing nylon guitar and sounding like an early Leonard Cohen.  In short:  well worth your attention.  If you don’t know her, you can begin below by checking out her song, I Lost Something in the Hills, included in the Wildwood playlist.  And then off you go into the finite Baier world.