Meg Baird Dear Companion by: Joseph Coscarelli Mon:15-Oct-07 Label: Drag City Year: 2007 WB rating 81 out of 100

In Dolly Parton's 1973 single 'Jolene' the song's protagonist begs passionately for faithfulness from her lover, but not from the man himself. Instead, the alluring Jolene – whose smile, we're told, is "like a breath of spring" – is the object of Parton's plea, as if the temptress holds an unbreakable spell over the male lead as he sits dangling, salivating and torn from his true love. Meg Baird's 'Dear Companion', the opening track (and closing, performed a cappella) from her album of the same name, serves in many ways as a sequel to 'Jolene,' detailing the aftermath of the affair had Parton's imploring gone ignored.

Where Parton's rollicking finger-picking backs her fiery, impassioned words – "I'm begging of you please don't take my man" – Baird conveys forlorn resignation, having come to accept staggering loss. "I once did have a dear companion/ Indeed I thought his love my own," goes Baird's take on the old folk standard, once performed by country-folk legends Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Parton herself. And while the specifics may differ (Baird's black-eyed nemesis to Jolene's auburn hair and eyes of emerald green), the sorrow put forth with spare acoustic plucks and telling vocals proves Baird as a vintage, pure folk siren.

Archaic in its simplicity and song choice, Dear Companion forgoes the eccentricities of folk's more apparent modern incarnation, call it freak-folk, psych-folk or what have you. Baird's full-time band, Espers, is one of many groups to draw this distinction, as are many familiar names (Smog, Joanna Newsom) on the Chicago-based Drag City label. But for her solo record, Baird has gathered a quaint collection of traditional songs, covers and originals, all with the weathered feel of a period piece – conducive to nature visuals of slow streams and large, grassy fields with a soft breeze blowing.  

Baird's own songs, 'Riverhouse in Tinicum' and 'Maiden in the Moor Lay', pair her antiquated diction with her calming croon, but it is as interpreter where Baird hones her born-in-the-wrong-decade (or even century) persona. Fraser & DeBolt cover 'The Waltze of the Tennis Players' is alluring and flirtatious, giving way to the album's brightest moment, when Baird coos "Your love for me is an overnight sensation/My love for you is an overnight sensation, too." The traditional, 'Sweet William and Fair Ellen', uses thin strums to stabilize Baird's storytelling, her elusive accent sounding vaguely Irish and but wholly authentic.

In a sense, Meg Baird conjures a matured version of Marissa Nadler (whose Songs III: Bird on the Water is another of the year's folk highlights). Where Nadler sounds unsure and curiously naive, her voice fluttering and beautifully frail, Baird is more observational and guarded, keeping her notes close and melodies tight. On a record where even a vocal overdub sounds relatively extravagant, Baird is at her most vulnerable on the a cappella version of 'Dear Companion' that bookends the brief, 11-track affair. Her voice unadorned, she sings the same time-honored tale that welcomed the listener to this aural dreamland of yore, and in its country-gothic grace, the journey could not feel more genuine.