Celebrating Sibylle Baier and her underrated folk masterpiece ‘Colour Green’
Many female folk artists have flown under the radar for decades, failing to receive the recognition they deserve until much later on. Artists such as Vashti Bunyan and Connie Converse let their music go largely unheard until it was rediscovered via the power of the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The same happened to German singer-songwriter Sibylle Baier, whose music was released in 2006, over 30 years after it had been recorded in the attic as her family slept at night.
However, while Bunyan and Converse attempted to sell their records, Baier created her music without the intention of others hearing it. Instead, she stashed away her reel-to-reel tapes, a capsule of melancholic acoustic tracks about sadness, heartbreak, longing and family. However, when her son Robby, a record producer, found the tapes, he decided to turn them into a compilation CD to share with Baier’s family and close friends. Amazed by the beauty of his mother’s music, he played the recordings to them at a gathering, but Baier was horrified. “I am embarrassed, I’m livid, I’m angry. Why these old … These old things of my life. And goodness and ah! And it was very uncomfortable,” she explained in a rare interview.
Luckily, Baier quickly warmed to the idea of her music being heard when she realised how well it had been received. The album, Colour Green, ended up in the hands of J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr, who gave a copy to his friend Andrew Rieger at Orange Twin Records. Soon enough, the album was released to the world, garnering a cult following of folk fans who compared the record to the work of musical geniuses such as Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell. In 2015, one of Mascis’ friends, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, praised Baier, telling The New York Times: “I really love Baier’s sweetly melancholy melodies. She wrote one record, and it’s stunningly beautiful”.
Despite her dedicated following, little is known about Baier, and videos and photos of the singer remain minimal. However, German filmmaker Wim Wenders captured a rare portrait of her in his 1974 film Alice in the Cities. In one scene, Baier can be seen singing ‘Softly’ on a boat with her son Robby by her side. The eponymous character stands by her and poses for a photograph, which is snapped by Rüdiger Vogler’s Philip. Wenders was a friend of Baier’s, and she immortalised their friendship in the song ‘Wim’, in which she sings: “Do you know Wim?/ He likes cities, and I like him”. Following the rediscovery of Baier’s music, Wenders asked Baier to create a new song for his film Palmero Shooting, which became one of her only pieces of music recorded since Colour Green.
Baier’s record is a true folk masterpiece, on par with the critically lauded albums of the genre. The simplicity of Baier’s guitar and her beautifully tender voice make for a winning combination, and it’s a true shame that the singer only has a mere 15 songs to her name. The album opens with ‘Tonight’, a short narrative tale in which Baier recalls coming home from work feeling hurt and singing to a man who “gently took my arm/ He listened to my tears till dawn”.
Baier’s melancholy finds support with the subject in ‘Tonight’, yet on the following track ‘I Lost Something in the Hills’, she finds herself much more isolated. Baier makes the depth of her emotions effortlessly apparent, as she associates beauty and nature with death: “When I pass through the leg high grass, I shall die/ Under the jasmine, I shall die”. Imagery such as “Now I lean on my window sill/ And I cry, though it’s silly/ And I’m dreaming of off and away” possesses a distinctly relatable element that makes Baier’s words feel incredibly universal and poignant.
In ‘The End’, Baier conveys heartbreak with damning accuracy, charting the deterioration of a relationship once sweet. The singer finds optimism with ‘Softly’, singing a gentle lullaby to celebrate her children, capturing simple moments with them, reflected in the lines, “That’s how to live and laugh and feel better/ I cut the bread for them and they run”.
Domesticity and the pains of everyday life become central to Baier’s words, as demonstrated in ‘Remember the Day’, where she sings striking lines such as, “When I left home to just buy some food/ Considering if one shouldn’t die or if one should”. Despite her grief, the track – the first she ever wrote – conveys hopefulness emerging from an appreciation for nature.
Another moment of hope arises from ‘Forget About’, which is so gentle that it could easily bring you to tears. Over soft guitars and a nostalgic melody, Baier sings: “You made me forget about/ Past and pain”. Alongside her tribute to Wenders, she also pays homage to the modernist poet T.S. Eliot in ‘Says Elliott’, lifting lines from his poems, such as The Wasteland.
The theme of ambition, arising from unhappiness, continues on ‘Colour Green’, in which Baier proposes that she knitted the jumper she saw herself wearing in her dreams of New York to try and make them real. The way the singer captures snapshots of her defining daydreams and memories makes Colour Green so special, as Baier connects with the listeners through the reassurance that she, too, spends much time in her head.
Closing Colour Green is ‘Give Me a Smile’, which, unlike the other songs on the album, contains gentle strings behind the guitar. It’s a short and sweet love song, totalling less than two minutes, but the feeling conveyed by Baier’s gorgeous tones makes it a standout piece.
Baier continues to find new fans every year, although she prefers to keep herself away from the public eye. However, fans can leave notes of appreciation on a website created by her son. Almost 1000 entries have been left in the guestbook, which includes notes such as “Colour Green is almost unbearably beautiful”, with another user describing Baier’s music as “my motivation to continue living”. The resonant nature of Baier’s work resides in her depiction of the everyday, her illumination of the little daydreams we try to suppress, and in the honesty with which she sings, no doubt resulting from the fact she never intended anyone to hear her lyrics in the first place.
Luckily, Baier is now happy for people to hear her work, which stands as one of the most gorgeous and tender collections of folk music ever recorded.