Almost Blue (reissue)

Elvis Costello wrote this lyric and melody, and Baker recorded it in the 1980s near the end of his life when his voice had traveled even further into its particular territory of quiet devastation. The song is built almost entirely from restraint — the tempo barely moves, the accompaniment is minimal to the point of austerity, and Baker's voice by this point had lost whatever youthful smoothness it once had, replaced by something far more interesting: a texture like worn suede, fragile in places, still controlled but now bearing the evidence of what had passed. The melancholy is not affected or performed; it is simply present the way certain kinds of light are present at dusk. There is no resolution in the song, no turn toward hope — it stays in its particular shade of blue without apology. Costello's lyric deals in the specific color of romantic uncertainty, the feeling of being almost but not quite completely fine, and Baker understands this not as a concept but as weather he has lived in. This recording belongs to the last chapter of a brilliant and troubled life, and that biographical weight is impossible to separate from the sound. It is music for the honest acknowledgment of damage — not wallowing, but not pretending either. A document of someone looking at what remains with clear, tired eyes.