The melodic sighs on her recordings seem to be the only breaths Maria Taylor has the time to take. Though often referred to as half of the duo Azure Ray, Maria’s course was charted well before that – from her childhood home in Birmingham, which her father, a musician, equipped with a studio. Some things a person just knows, and for Maria, being a musician was never really a question. At age 15, as a student at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, Maria met classmate Orenda Fink. The two formed Little Red Rocket, a rock/pop group that drew comparisons to Lush and Belly, as well as the attention of Tim/Kerr Records, who issued the band’s 1997 debut, Who Did You Pay. By the time they’d released their second and final full-length, 2000’s It’s in the Sound (Monolyth), Little Red Rocket had signed to Geffen, been released from contract in the Universal Music Group merger, and had relocated to the musical Mecca of Athens, Georgia. It was in Athens that the group disbanded, with Maria and Orenda continuing on together both as Azure Ray and as 2/4’s of the Saddle Creek band Now It’s Overhead. Just a year following the final Little Red Rocket album, both of Maria’s new bands were already releasing their self-titled debuts (Azure Ray’s on Warm Recordings and Now It’s Overhead’s on Saddle Creek). 2002 was no less hectic, with Maria and Orenda relocating from Athens to Omaha and releasing Burn and Shiver for Warm and the November EP for Saddle Creek. Their third full-length, 2003’s Hold on Love, was Azure Ray’s first for Saddle Creek, and was bolstered by two singles, The Drinks We Drank Last Night and New Resolution. While the band’s non-stop touring schedule and their move to Omaha made collaborating with the Athens- based Now It’s Overhead a long distance affair, the four-piece released Fall Back Open for Saddle Creek in 2004. Azure Ray and Now It’s Overhead aside, Maria’s luminous vocals and multi- instrumentalist talents have seen her name attached to an impressive roster of musicians. She’s popped up on Crooked Fingers’ Bring on the Snakes, Bright Eyes Lifted or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, and Moby’s 18. Her distinctive voice can also be found on such releases as The Bruces’ Shining Path (2004), The Faint’s Wet From Birth (2004), and Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005). Espousing this same spirit of collaboration on her first solo full-length, 11:11, Maria recruited an all-star cast that featured the talents of former Cursive cellist Gretta Cohn, Now It’s Overhead’s Andy LeMaster, and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis. LeMaster and Mogis each lent his talents in the recording, production, and engineering of the record, as well, resulting in an album that set her compositions awash in an ethereal, melancholic glow. 11:11 was the natural culmination of over a decade’s experience in songwriting. And now, after countless tours supporting 11:11 throughout America and Europe, Maria brings us her second collection of solo material in Lynn Teeter Flower. The collection reveals a woman settling very well into her role as a solo artist, peeling back some of the layers of the last album to reveal a more organic sound, one that resembled the hundreds of shows she had done all over the globe over the course of the last year. Some of the songs were written between tours for 11:11, while others were written over an intensive period of five months while she steadily recorded all over America. She began the recording process by working on two songs with Spoon’s drummer Jim Eno in Austin, hopped over to Athens to record four more with Now It’s Overhead’s Andy LeMaster, and then ended up in Memphis to work with Doug Easley (Cat Power, Pavement). The record also sees contributions from Maria’s brother and sister– bassist Macey Taylor and keyboardist Kate Taylor, both of whom played in her live band, as well as Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. The result is a collection of some of the finest songs Maria Taylor has ever written, which is no small feat, considering how long she has been playing music. Like a fine wine, Maria’s songcraft has only gotten more exceptional over time; Lynn Teeter Flower sees her mixing together soaring guitars, bubbly electronics, feathery farfisa organs and sugary layers of vocals into the sweetest confection of an album you’ll hear all year. Lynn Teeter Flower will be released on Saddle Creek on March 6th, 2007.
