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Alex Korshin, left, and Jennifer Baron of The Garment District.
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The Garment District delivers a new psych-rock classic

Courtesy of Jennifer Baron

The Garment District delivers a new psych-rock classic

Pittsburgh's Jennifer Baron, also of The Ladybug Transistor, created “Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World" in a Mount Washington studio

“I'm not like a gearhead nerd,” Jennifer Baron declares. But, maybe she is.

In the first seven minutes of our conversation, the musician behind The Garment District mentions her Fender Vibrolux Reverb amp from the ‘70s, the Rickenbacker she got from Pittsburgh Guitars, her ‘60s Vox Super Continental organ, Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face pedal, Roland Paraphonic 505 keyboard and the bag of pedals she borrowed from Gregg Kostelich of The Cynics.

“I like to have some of my vintage instruments just around the house,” she says, “like maybe some in the office, the bedroom, downstairs in the practice space, living room, so that they're kind of like seamlessly part of the furniture, you know? Part of the house.”

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Judging from her latest album, “Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World,” Baron seems right at home with the furniture.

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The album is an instant, modern-day psych-rock classic combining jangly and fuzzy garage-rock riffs, mesmerizing hooks, unexpected sonic shifts and touches of ominous electronics.

Baron, who was born in New Jersey and moved to Pittsburgh as a kid, brings the experience of being a longtime member of Brooklyn indie-pop band The Ladybug Transistor along with her brother Jeff. She credits Jeff — whose band, Worm Mart, opened for Nirvana at its Pittsburgh debut at the Sonic Temple in 1989 — for inspiring her to play bands.

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Baron lived in Brooklyn in the late ‘90s during the formative Ladybug years and then returned to Pittsburgh in 2011, where she launched The Garment District, initially as a mostly instrumental project. She’s also known for co-coordinating the Handmade Arcade craft shows and co-creating the photography book, “Pittsburgh Signs Project: 250 Signs of Western Pennsylvania.”

After eight dormant years, Ladybug, part of the Elephant 6 psych-pop movement, reunited in June 2019 to play the Egersund Visefestival in Norway for the 20th anniversary and deluxe edition of its signature album, “The Ablemarle Sound.” When further plans for the band were waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic, she got busy on this fifth Garment District album, a followup to the 2015 instrumental album “Luminous Toxin,” working at David Klug’s studio in Mount Washington.

Baron plays guitar, keyboards and some bass and drums on the record, joined by a cast that includes drummer Sean Finn, bassist Corry Drake, guitarist Dan Koshute and both her cousin Lucy Blehar and Alex Korshin on lead vocals.

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It was a warm environment, she says, to experiment with her combination of analog and digital sounds.

“I might start writing on keyboards. I might start writing on guitar. I might make a demo on my phone. I make a lot of demos using a Boss digital eight-track,” she says. “I'm really interested in texture, and melodies that kind of weave in and out, and how the arrangements progress over time. So, some things might be repetitive in the song, but as you'll hear in different sections, I'm really thinking about what could be introduced or maybe even taken away, how something builds, whether it's the narrative or the sound.”

The best example is the aptly named “The Starfish Song,” which eases in with a funk bassline and handclaps before taking us on a cosmic trip with the snarling guitar riff, whirling organ and girl-group pop vocals all taking turns at controlling the song.

To Baron, the lyrics and vocals serve as another instrument in the song

“Some of them are highly personal experiences and some are based on things that inspire me and that could come from memories or films,” she said. “It's a wide range, but I also really love the idea of giving music over to the world and letting listeners create their own stories and narratives around it.”

Blehar, currently pursuing an acting career in Los Angeles, carries the melodies perfectly, joined by Baron on the harmonies.

“I started working with her when she was still living in Pittsburgh because we have a very strong creative bond,” Baron says. “I would see her in her high school musicals and there was something in her voice that I thought would work really well with my music.”

Another surprising shift on the album comes on “The Island of Stability,” which starts with the ladies doing airy woo-woo vocals before Koshute comes in strong like Ian Curtis.

“He's played live with me for years, and he was a big part of my life in this album,” she says. “He’s singing the verses, like the Joy Division part, and then I thought of the bridge as like the Marc Bolan part. Again, I don't go into writing music saying, ‘I want this to sound like this.’ I’m not that literal. But I've been listening to Joy Division since my early teens. I listen to the same music I grew up with. Seeing New Order and The Smiths and those bands, it changed my life. It's not an exaggeration.”

Baron makes space for one cover on the album, the hazy “Following Me,” by ‘60s LA garage-rock band The Human Expression.

“‘Optical Sound’ was their big psych ‘Nuggets’ hit from ‘Love at Psychedelic Velocity,’ their one album,” Baron says. “It was reissued a couple times and on the Mississippi Records reissue that I got on vinyl, there was a bonus 45. And I've always loved that song because it's a garage-rock song and a psych-rock song, but it's moody and it's really mellow, and I wanted to flip it and give it like a girl-group wall of sound with a female perspective.”

“And so Gregg [Kostelich] lent me a box of pedals. It was just so generous. He wasn't, like, precious about them. I actually got to experiment with them and keep them for a long time to work and use them on a lot of the songs. I’m all about the one button, the big metal boxes.”

The album is issued by Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records, the label forged by Athens Popfest founder Mike Turner, a longtime supporter of Elephant 6-related bands.

“That whole community has embraced this album and been so supportive and it means the world to me,” she says, “because these are serious music people. They're freaks about the whole Elephant 6 scene in terms of supporting it. And it's just this pureness, this purity of support.”

The show at The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls will celebrate The Garment District alongside new singles from Chariot Fade ("Make Yours Like Mine") and "So Many Things At Once," and a compilation being released on cassette and digitally by Norway-based label 6612 Tapes. It includes a remix of The Garment District’s “A Street Called Finland," which Baron created with musician, producer and DJ Buscrates (also on the bill), and a live song recorded during The Ladybug Transistor tour in November.

“The cassette is raising money for Justice Democrats,” Baron says, “so I'm really honored to be on that, and It's kind of like an extension of the new music.”

The show begins at 9 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $10/$12; Mrsmalls.com.

First Published: April 15, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: April 16, 2024, 2:06 a.m.

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Alex Korshin, left, and Jennifer Baron of The Garment District.  (Courtesy of Jennifer Baron)
Courtesy of Jennifer Baron
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