While riding in the Mazda3 Time Machine, as I was yesterday afternoon, sometimes a stream of poetic lines flows from a wellspring somewhere deep inside that deftly describes the song and/or album blaring from the Bose speakers. But by the time I’ve parked and departed the car, the thought has drifted away as if exhaust fumes into the atmosphere. (Unlike Dylan, I’ve yet to go electric.) Then, late at night, just as the mind’s winding down, the rhapsodic rumination returns with a vengeance, bouncing about my brain as if shouting, “Let me out!”
For the past good while, at least, such has been the case whenever I listen to Sophie Gault’s Baltic Street Hotel, which is out this Friday. It’s inspired some of the loftiest prose I’ve never put to the proverbial paper found in Pages—Apple’s native word processing program, for those not in the know. (Somewhere, I hear Van Morrison muttering, “Rave on, Jeffrey G. Rave on.”) The taut grooves and incisive lyrics send me on flights of indescribable whimsy, in other words. They remind me of another age. They remind me of myself.
The album is Gault’s first since disbanding Sophie & the Broken Things, whose Delusions of Grandeur reverberated throughout my 2022. That 10-song set was mixed and mastered by Ray Kennedy, Steve Earle’s Twangtrust partner; this time, he helms the production from start to finish. Gault, for her part, handles acoustic guitar, while Josh Grange plays electric guitar and Mellotron keyboard, Steve Mackey plucks the bass, and Lynn Williams thumps the drums. Siobhan Kennedy provides backing vocals, while Gabe Lee lends his dulcet tones to one song and Matthew Paige sings on another. A Choir of Angels (aka Lilly Hiatt, Jon Latham, CoraLee, Corrie Jones and John Laprade) provide heavenly harmonies on two tracks.
The difference between the Broken Things outing and Baltic Street Hotel isn’t the production or band, however. It’s the songs. On that earlier album, she cast her camera on the world around her. This time, she turns the lens on herself and the disease she’s dealt with for much of her life: bipolar disorder. One need not to have experienced manic episodes or their reverse to identify, either. Life is life, packed with plenty of ups and as many downs. We’ve all sought, as she sings in the opener, to kick the devil away. Most of us have succeeded.
“Kick the Devil Away” stomps with reined-in abandon, while Gault paints a late-night encounter with a wounded soul who could well be her reflection in the mirror: “If you hold on to that glass any tighter/It’s gonna bust into pieces/And while you’re bitchin’ about how they kicked you out/You won’t realize that you’re bleeding.” “Fixin’ Things” injects black humor into the pathos—and a grinding guitar solo, too: “I’m fixin’ things, I’m fixin’ things this time/duct tape and some bailing wire/I’m fixin things, I’m fixin things and this time/I swear I’m gonna make it right.” Here’s a live rendition from a few months back:
I spotlighted “Lately,” an aching duet with Gabe Lee, a while back; as I said then, it sounds like a long-lost duet between Lucinda Williams and Don Henley. “Poet in a Buick,” on the other hand, celebrates the impromptu passions of kindred spirits. It pushes the pedal to the metal like a Tom Petty tune, essentially running down the impromptu dreams of kindred spirits: “He’s my poet in a Buick, in the fast lane/Feels like I coulda knew him, before I knew his name/I love riding shotgun, roll me up another one/let’s burn our troubles up in flames/He’s my poet in a Buick, driving me insane.” It’s raucous, sweaty and real.
“Kid on the Radio” features accompaniment from the aforementioned Choir of Angels. It lowers the tempo but not tension, and celebrates how something as intangible as music can make us feel less alone. “Jealousy” is not, as a cursory listen may indicate, a twist on “Jolene” that swaps out the pleas to the other woman for a threat: “I’d put you six feet under the ground/But I can never see you when you come around.” That second line is the important one, I think. I could be wrong (and likely am), but I hear the song as an extended metaphor for Gault’s bipolar disorder. She yearns for it to leave her alone.
An aching rendition of Patty Griffin’s “Every Little Bit” follows. It’s a devastating account of the morning after a one-night stand, when the revelry of the evening before is left exposed for the meaningless event it was. “Lights,” on the other hand, essentially digs into the empty feelings that may have led to the encounter: Gault vows to stay out all night in order to avoid going home alone, seeking beauty—and escape—wherever she may find it.
Released last November as the album’s first single, “Christmas in the Psych Ward” is a remarkable account of Gault’s experience under psychiatric care: “It’s Christmas in the psych ward, I’m doing alright/I buzz like a lightbulb till I shut my eyes/This morning I threw up from all the lithium they gave me/There’s a phone on the wall, but nobody at all who could save me.” As with the other songs here, it conjures the sonic palate of Americana circa the early 1990s—one part country, one part rock, all parts good. And though the subject may seem a bit out-there, the sense of abandonment it engenders is not.
The album’s penultimate track, “Over and Out,” finds her seeking forgiveness for damage she may have done to a relationship—platonic, romantic, it doesn’t much matter. It sets the stage in the first stanza: “Hey, are you okay?/I’ve been calling all night/Thinking ‘bout you all day/I didn’t mean to hurt you/When I said those things in that way.” It’s a remarkable, reverb-heavy confession about what it means to be human.
The gentle “Things Are Going Good” wraps things up on a nice note. Despite it raining off and on, she’s content and feeling the metaphoric warmth of the sun.
In short, Baltic Street Hotel is one of those rare albums that resonates larger with every listen. It’s an involving exploration of a tough subject done in such an artful way that we come away not just empathizing with Gault’s experiences, but seeing ourselves in them. It’s a stunning set that deserves a wide audience.
The track list:
The Old Grey Cat 
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