It takes a special type of musician to take a bicycling accident where they went a bit too hard into a turn that resulted in them skidding across the road like a penguin and left them with a nasty scar on their wrist. Luckily Baird is that type of musician as today he’s unleashed Easy On Them Turns, a track dedicated to the cyclists of the world as he hopes to capture the same exhilarating feeling they get when going down a hill at a hundred miles an hour without a single care in the world. Just make sure there’s not a 90 degree turn at the bottom of the hill and you don’t do the infamous penguin slide.
As per usual, Baird blurs the lines between genres as he takes aspect from all walks of musical life to create a varied soundscape that could be classed as a wide range of genres. With a backbone comprised of slick acoustic guitar chords melting over the top of distorted beats that get your head moving like a bobble head and morphing samples that add a gritty textured to the sonic affair. As the melodies take you away you feel a rush pulse through you. It’s like an instant injection of adrenaline as the indie jam of a chorus brings that feeling of riding your bike with your hands off the handles bars to life as the thrill of it all transcends onto you. The animated energy is tangible, it comes straight from the song into your body as you can’t help but smile from ear to ear as the addictive number plays on.
“‘Easy on Them Turns’ is a cautionary story. I was biking to the studio, as I do every morning on my electric bike which seems to have a minimum and maximum speed of 20 miles per hour. Around the corner on 23rd and Grand, I leaned a little harder into the turn than I should have. Maybe it was the weight of my backpack, maybe it was my reckless abandon, but I felt the tire loose grip on the ground and before I knew it I was over the handlebars, skidding penguin-style on the road. I was alright — a hole in my jeans and some lost skin, but nothing I couldn’t patch up. Getting up, the hook came into my head. Note to self: Easy on them turns. If I was going to have an ugly scar on my wrist, I might as well get a song out of it”. He continues: “’Easy on Them Turns”’is a song for anyone who rides bikes in cities. For the first 18 months I lived in LA I couldn’t really afford a car and so biking to and from the studio became a daily ritual. I wanted the music to feel fun and exhilarating, like the wind in your face, but unresolved and tense to reflect the stress and constant vigilance that you get riding through DTLA”.