Album Notes

A double bass-wielding instrumentalist and haunting vocalist, Nat Baldwin blazed a path to musicianship that wasn’t succinctly evident as a high school basketball team captain leading his teammates to the Northeastern championship in his senior year.

As a high school student in the seaside town of Portsmouth, NH, Baldwin was a portrait in dichotomy: he warmed to both the bass and basketball with equal parts vigor and natural talent. While he mastered the unsung hero and neglected spine of jazz outside the gymnasium, Baldwin also shone on the court becoming an MVP, and was courted by numerous colleges hungry for a star player. However, he opted for music school, confounding those who knew him only as a maestro on the hardwood. But to Baldwin - as passionate about the Oakland band Xiu Xiu as he was about the Boston Celtics - pursuing music was no different from basketball; the choice was only which fortunate blend of drive and raw natural talent was to follow.

Upon relocating to the Connecticut community surrounding Wesleyan University, he immersed himself in the experimental/noise music scene and eventually approached free jazz legend Anthony Braxton, a professor at the esteemed university. Baldwin soon joined the composer’s student orchestra and enrolled in his composition class. Braxton’s influence was clear on Baldwin’s 2003 debut, the experimental and improvised free jazz album Solo Contrabass.

A creative rut followed this inaugural output though, finding Nat returning to New Hampshire and called back to the court. But after months of intense basketball training at a nearby college and a return to student life, the then-22- year-old realized he belonged in music, dusted off his double bass, and delved into songwriting with a renewed fervor. A single auspicious night turned the corner for Baldwin; after nearly a year away from the bass, he worked through the night composing sketches of eight songs. This creative outpouring met with yet another fateful turn the very next day, as a friend invited Baldwin to perform solo for the first time.

Propelled by this first solo performance and first time singing in front of an audience, these demos grew into the venerated 2005 EP Lights Out, an album whose brevity is a testament to Baldwin’s enviable ability to densely pack raw intensity and grandeur into his songs. This self-described first foray into pop songs set the stage for critical accolades and widespread recognition to come; the EP garnered a 7.8 review from new media tastemaker Pitchfork and the track “Only In My Dreams” was scooped up by UK telecom giant Orange for a national ad campaign.

Baldwin’s 2006 follow up LP, Enter the Winter, showcased his expanding musical palette with the addition of cello and trumpet to his distinctive and highly personal sound, and welcomed the Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth on drums and percussion. Baldwin also joined Dirty Projectors on their tour in 2006, and played bass on the band’s critically lauded Black Flag homage, 2007’s Rise Above. While on the road with Dirty Projectors, Nat reworked and honed songs first conceived in the fall of 2005, subsequently recording them in Longstreth’s Brooklyn brownstone in just one week, with Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor at the helm as engineer, producer, and “indispensable coach.” MVP, the album that emerged from these sessions, sees Baldwin at his most confident, made up of grand, eerie and captivating songs that demonstrate his continuing growth as a songwriter.

As MVP descends, the ever-prolific Baldwin says he is eager to debut new material. We’re ready and waiting.