LINDA SMITH and NANCY ANDREWS - A Passing Cloud LP

Nancy Andrews and Linda Smith shared a house in Baltimore with a continuously revolving cast of artists and musicians. It was there the like-minded artists formed their first band, Ceramic Madonna Head (with Plastic Arms), a short-lived project which included housemates Elizabeth Downing and Peggy Bitzer. Smith and Bitzer decided to move to NY where they would form a new band called The Woods while Andrews and Downing remained in Baltimore and formed a performance art band called Lambs Eat Ivy.

While playing guitar in The Woods in the mid-’80s Smith purchased her first 4-track cassette recorder and embarked on a pioneering decade of solo, DIY home recording with a series of cassettes and 7"s of smart and moody singer-songwriter bedroom pop music.

This trailblazing period was documented on the Captured Tracks retrospective Till Another Time: 1988-1996. Her band, The Woods, made a record which was shelved for decades but will finally see release in 2023. During this same period Andrews pursued art, animation and filmmaking with occasional forays into music including another short-lived collaboration with Smith called The Gertrudes.

In 2020, Smith rediscovered some old tapes of Andrews’s songs she had recorded for her in the ’90s. In the process of digitizing the old recordings she was inspired to reach out and float the idea of a new collaborative recording project.

A Passing Cloud is the fruit of their rekindled long-distance musical conversation. They began the songwriting process by flipping through Andrews’s pulp fiction collection and pulling provocative phrases from the lurid titles and hard-boiled storylines. Then, they set out to create new stories from personal, feminist perspectives. All the songs were composed incrementally by passing tracks back and forth between Maine and Maryland.

This lovely and beguiling pop music may be borne out of isolation but it draws one in with a carefully rendered intimacy made possible by decades of artistic collaboration.