Live review: The Baker Suite, featuring Paul Grabowsky JIM MACK The Independent Weekly 14/09/2009
The rich, lush sound of the opening moments of this performance drew the audience in and held it until the standing ovation and cheers for more at the end. French café, gypsy reggae, a touch of country and jazz. Why don’t we hear this sort of music in the popular media? Maybe it requires a venue like the Promethean, a glass of wine and a romantic interest. John Baker, who writes the songs, has a whispering, almost raspy, vocal style – think Leonard Cohen or Jack Johnson. His acoustic guitar is subtle, rhythmic and tasteful. Gayle Buckby gives the band its distinctive sound with her gloriously melancholic accordion. My apprehension, fuelled by previous experiences of Italian boys playing accordion at school concerts, was eased within seconds. The eyes are drawn to Buckby, who commands the stage with her movement and presence. The performance also featured renowned jazz pianist Paul Grabowsky. The sound of his piano was understated, beautiful and always in sync with Buckby’s accordion. Even his solos crept up on you, with the audience appreciating the moment as he blended back in with the band. I was delighted that Baker and Buckby played a song on their own during the encore; they have a great sound.  The songs were largely from The Baker Suite’s upcoming CD, A Quartet for Car Horns and Brakes.  Baker is a poetic storyteller with lyrical depth, and there was a rush to buy the CDs after the show. The songs feature subtle melody, light and dark, and mood in abundance. For the hyperactive, a good red wine would be a must. This performance was an oasis for the romantics, a great end to a hectic week, a great show. The sellout audience showed its appreciation. We bought the CD.

The Sydney Morning Herald, May 7-13 2010, John Shand
The Baker Suite – A Quartet for Car Horns and Brakes (MGM)
Adelaide’s John Baker trades in subtlety and nuance. The oddity is that he does this while making pop music. His lyrics have that hazy, oneiric quality you feel when awaking in the morning convinced you’ve already been up, and the last dream was real. The music echoes the words in this regard. Bakers voice is fragile and wispy, so final consonants fade to oblivion amid Gayle Buckby’s gentle backing vocals and the swishing accompaniment. The latter is all class, with Paul Grabowsky playing piano, contributing to the arrangements and producing the album. Brilliant guitarist Stephen Magnusson adds his own layers of mystery over the relaxed rhythm section and swooning violas. Pithy pop for thinking people.

REVIEW: The Baker Suite A Quartet For Car Horns And Brakes DB Magazine, by Patrick Lang
I’ve always maintained that the humble accordion is a much-undervalued instrument. By equal measures sensual, textural and driving when it needs to be, it can add so much with merely the lightest touch to any given song. Thankfully, this is a concept that Adelaide duo The Baker Suite understand, with singer/songwriter/guitarist John Baker sharing a wonderful amount of sonic space with accordionist/vocalist Gayle Buckby. Together they make a rather pretty sound, weaving a web between gypsy music, the tones of a Parisian cafe and just plain old quality song writing.  For their new album A Quartet For Car Horns And Brakes, they’ve enlisted the production and instrumental skills of Australian composer, pianist, jazz maestro and all round nice guy Paul Grabowsky, who brings their myriad of sounds together with a delightfully light touch. Taking a fairly old school approach to the mixing, with vocal, guitar and accordion way up in the mix underneath a solid bed of a riving but versatile rhythm section, his approach allows the songs to breathe, creating a wonderfully open, spacious record,. Grabowsky also adds piano and vibraphone to a number of tracks, playing a curious hybrid of jazz and classical styles that compliments the simple arrangements perfectly. The duo coast form one style to another with ease; from the tango of Caravans to the scratchy middle-easter tinged Could I BE Wrong? At all times Baker’s voice and keen sense of storytelling shines through, never letting the songs descend into background music.  Delicate, assured and sonically almost perfect, ‘A Quartet For Car Horns And Brakes’ has managed to keep the hushed intimacy of the duo whilst introducing a full band dynamic. The end result is charming, and one which The Baker Suite (and associates) should be very proud of.

REVIEW: Sunday Mail 7-4-10 A Quartet for Car Horns And Brakes (Planet / MGM) By Paul Nassari
The Baker Suite excels at unfolding relaxed jazz/pop stories, full of humility and subtle seduction.  Under the masterful guiding hand of acclaimed producer Paul Grabowsky, everything is arranged “just so”. Even the spaces in sound are part of the music. The deftly played and stylishly artful jazz/pop flirts easily with French cafe, gypsy romantica and even reggae.  All of this care and attention allows Baker’s stories to breathe and have a life of their own. The rustic vocals carry the air of a close friend.
DOWNLOAD: Caravans
FILE BETWEEN: Vince Jones, French Cafe

The Baker Suite Note, Boris Kelly ArtsHub | Sunday, March 07, 2010
A Quartet for Car Horns and Brakes
The Baker Suite is the eponymous creation of singer-songwriter John Baker who, together with his long time artistic accomplice Gayle Bucky, has turned in a suite of fine tunes for their new release A Quartet for Car Horns and Brakes. A cluster of considerable musical talent has been assembled in support by producer Paul Grabowsky. Baker has one of those voices - like Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb or Antonio Carlos Jobim - that whispers the lyric in your ear. At times, unwittingly I suspect, he channels that icon of west coast 70s cool, Michael Franks. One of the striking features of this album is the way the gentle intimacy of Baker's vocal style is never compromised by overzealous production. Even when the band is in full flight, Grabowsky manages to allow the arrangements to frame the lyric, to retain the integrity of the song. There is a lot to like in this album. The songs are rhythmically complex and diverse (everything from dancehall waltzes to shuffles, walking blues and tight knit reggae to hints of salsa and even tango). The restless energy in Baker's music, perfectly matched to his poetic leaning towards the twin themes of itinerancy and the roving eye of the visitor. Behind the eurocool of the album artwork beats a distinctively antipodean heart, evoking images and a host of characters viewed from the road and the carnival ground, both recurring metaphors in Baker's writing.
Like this from Caravan: Out here on the edge of town
The caravans are winding town
There's a bar-b-que at the swimming pool Meet Malcolm he's an ex DJ Now he's driving interstate He shoots wild pigs on his holiday
And again in Rusty Falcon: The rib cage in the red dust is worse for wear The crows are shiny undertakers here Two mangy dogs are snarling at my feet And I smell something burning in the street.
Grabowsky, Buckby and Baker have arranged the tunes to allow ample space for the listener to wander in the audio field where some very fine playing from all involved is going on. The instrumental bedrock of the music is the conversation between Baker's acoustic guitar and Buckby's accordion, a pairing brimming with nuance and whimsy. The combination cab be a little too sweet at times, especially when paired with Baker's more romantic lyrics, but Grabowsky does a great job in keeping sentimentality at bay. His medicine includes some dirty drum sounds that give the arrangements a firm spine off which the soloists can fly. And fly they do. Stephen Magnusson delivers some inspirational guitar atmospherics and when Grabowsky takes off vamping and tripping his way through Could I Be Wrong and Rusty Falcon the ensemble lifts with him. Baker is himself a highly accomplished guitarist whose playing on this album is more restrained texture than expressive soloing and it would be nice to hear him cut loose on occasion.
I recommend this album be played loud in traffic, on a long drive along a country road or over a good whiskey at home just before midnight.
The album is in stores now.
The Baker Suite’s national tour begins in mid March.
For details click here
ALBUM REVIEW
Title: A Quartet for Car Horns and Brakes
Artist: The Baker Suite 
Producer: Paul Grabowsky

Carmel Young, ArtsHub | Monday, September 21, 2009
The Baker Suite: 
It was a balmy Friday night in Adelaide and I was striding down Grote Street in a brand new pair of boots with the sweet taste of some sticky desert in my mouth when a crowd of smokers standing on the footpath caught my attention. God do people still do that? I thought smugly (having recently passed the 3 year mark) as they puffed away like a laneway of public servants on a break. They were crowding the entrance to the Promethean, an old converted – you guessed it – church, in the city of churches, now making a comeback as a jazz bar. I guessed the smokers must be Adelaide Festival staffers, who, like journos and coppers, run their working day on a mix strong coffee, cigarettes and adrenaline, even in the downtime. Their new boss was guesting on piano tonight so what might have been a small gig was packed to the rafters. I guess one of the great achievements of Paul Grabowski on this occasion, while accompanying a fabulously funky quintet (The Baker Suite), was to not outshine the centre stage talent whilst providing a blisteringly soulful support that was clearly taking their show to new heights. I don't mean funky in the musical sense, it was definitely jazzy, but not jazz. It was the music of a guy (John Baker) who'd grown up practicing Masters of War and Love The One Your With in his bedroom but was then sidetracked by Miles Davis and led off into the woods by a band of wild gypsies. The music is too round for the pigeon hole yet flies like a bird across the stylistic terrain. Each song tells it's own rhythmic story and by the time it comes home is true to nothing but itself. Craning for a glimpse of the man behind the shuffling drum beat tucked away in the corner of a small stage engulfed by a huge piano, I imagine a tall thin man whose ankles show below his trouser cuffs. The bass man and viola lady wind their bodies around the notes they offer into the mix, sometimes imperceptible but always with a passion and the accordian is so upfront almost all the time she vies for the mantle of band leader with the maestro. But half-way through their set it becomes clear that the songs are his. John Baker was obviously kidnapped by the poets while he was off with the gypsies for he turns a wonderous phrase in every line and leaves you lamenting not being able to recall the story of the previous song once a new one has you entranced. But throughout the night, the thrumbing presence, the tinkering topping, the electric interruptions of Grabowski's light touch adds a finess that merely helps a wonderful original form of new Australian music to shine for the small audience who paid too little and took away too much from the converted church on Grote Street that night.