Geography always played a big role for Vampire Weekend, from the smoggy New York City skyline cover of 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City to the international references in their lyrics, which reaches from Berkeley to Angkor Wat to Dar es Salaam. But the sense of place is more ambiguous on bassist Chris Baio’s solo debut The Names. Much like David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy – Low (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979) – The Names, which came out last September on Glassnote Records, reflects its musician’s displacement in its sound. For Bowie, it was Los Angeles to Berlin; for Baio, it was NYC to London.
Baio cites the Berlin Trilogy as an inspiration for The Names and told the Emerald that before Bowie’s passing in January this year he spent the weekend obsessively listening to his final record Blackstar.
“When I woke up the following Monday and saw that his name was trending on Twitter, I thought it was related to the album,” he wrote via email. “I’ll always remember spending the Tuesday of that week walking around Brixton with Blackstar on repeat and leaving flowers at his childhood home in Stansfield Road. I’m still listening to it regularly and feel like it’s the greatest album ever made by a recording artist in their sixties.”
Baio relocated to London in summer 2013 while touring with the band for Modern Vampires and beginning to write The Names. The album’s electronic and ambient atmosphere is stronger than anything in the Vampire Weekend catalog, but a fan of that band’s Afropop frivolity could still relish in the nimble guitar hook of “Sister of Pearl.”
Baio’s ‘The Names’ came out on Sept. 18.
The cover art shows a towering white apartment building, punctuated with windows in perfect symmetry. The image from artist Matthias Heiderich, whose works regularly land somewhere in the uncanny valley — not quite a real photo nor a fabricated graphic — emphasizes the ambiguous sense of place in the album.
“I bought two prints of Heiderich’s and they hang in my home studio,” wrote Baio. “I try to channel them whenever I’m working on music. I picked the specific image for a bunch of reasons, but more than anything I just found it very striking and iconic.”
You can catch Baio this Sunday, May 29, at 7:30 p.m. on the Chupacabra stage during the Sasquatch Music Festival. This will be the first time he’s played the festival without Vampire Weekend.
“I’ve always loved playing Sasquatch and was really happy when I found out I’d be playing it this year,” he said. “I’ve never played the Chupacabra stage, but my understanding is that Chupacabras are rather spooky, so I’m hoping to bring deeply spooky vibes for my set on Sunday.”
Listen to Baio’s “Sister of Pearl” from The Names below.