‘Une Collection de Chansons’ it is written on the beautiful and colourful designed cover of Old Things. But it are experimental songs though. Songs like in tiny postrock guitardrone sound scupltures with dreamlike vocals by Jessica, of which on this release rare material is compiled from the years 1999-2003, in between the second and third album of Jessica Bailiff. The material was originally released on various labels such as Resonant, Bad Jazz, Brainwashed and Great Vitamin Mystery and now for the first time available compiled on one cd. This release is out via the belgian Morc records. Jessica however is mostly known from her albums via Kranky, though. Back to the music. As said the songs mostly consist of postrock guitar experiments with the use of loops and echo effects and dreamy vocals, with in the older songs mainly links to drone centered free guitarmusic and postrock ambient and in the newer songs more hints towards more direct shoegaze and lo-fi folk music.

In ‘Crush’, originally released as 7 inch via the US Ypsilanti records, Jesica’s good friend and mentor Alan Sparhawk from Low plays the electric guitar. In ‘Your Sounds Make Patterns in My Eyes’, ‘Amethyst Depression’ and ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ a guest part is for Jesse Edwards from The Dithering Effect. Furthermore it is solowork that is compiled on Old Things. The work of Jessica Bailiff is quite interesting. Styles such as ambient, folk and postrock meet each other and this results in powerful sonic explorations with the vocals of Jessica as a seductive siren doing it’s work. Dreamlike sung atmospherical guitarsongs with experimental undertones like ‘Warren’ or ‘Helpless’ know how to appeal, but personally i like her later more direct vocal style a bit more, with next to the sound explorations, also acoustic guitar and double vocal lines, as can be heard in ‘Shadow’. Another highlight is the previously mentioned postrock centered song together with The Dithering Effect, ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ with it’s spacey and hypnotising atmosphere. Old Things is a nice collection of songs that really nicely shows the development of Jessica Bailiff as an artist.