Sibylle Baier's Colour Green

To call this CD a lost treasure or a recently discovered classic would be an understatement. Its like finding a musical time capsule from 1971. Imagine discovering an albums worth of previously unknown Joni Mitchell songs circa Blue. Its like that.

Though she studied piano and guitar at an early age Sibylle Baier was not a musician or songwriter but primarily an actress. After a spirit-renewing road trip through the Swiss Alps in the early 70s she returned home and wrote a song called Remember the Day. It was the first song she ever wrote. Though her music did come to appear in a film by Wim Wenders she never pursued a career in music. The songs, recorded between 1970 and 1973 on a home reel to reel, were only shared among family and friends and never released.

Some thirty years her son dug the recordings out of the closet and made CDs for family members. He also got one into the hands of a producer and the rest is history.

There is a hushed melancholy to these fragile songs. A haunting sadness. Its like listening in on an intimate private conversation, or reading someones diary. Its a bare album and with the exception of only a few songs her vocals are accompanied only by guitar. Comparisons have been made to Nico, Nick Drake, and Vashti Bunyan. There's a definite folk quality to the recordings. The melodies are subdued yet uplifting. It took over thirty years for these songs to surface. We can be thankful that they did.