The early works of Ohio-based singer-songwriter Jessica Bailiff (2) were, de facto, collaborations with Low's guitarist Alan Sparhawk. Even In Silence (1998) set her dilated, ethereal vocals and her intimate, bedroom confessions, against the backdrop of an unfocused, loose instrumental noise. She was among the first musicians to fuse folk, ambient, psychedelia and slo-core.

Even In Silence (Kranky, 1998) originated from the guitar drones that she recorded at home (Toledo, Ohio), then modified in studio with the help che Jessica Bailiff aggiusto` in studio con l'aiuto di of Low's Alan Sparhawk.
Hidden within the continuous flow of "mantric" hisses, Overcast contains tiny melodic carillons that are repeated with minimum variations. Failing Yesterday is instead a song in the tradition of the intimate songwriter, although performed with a bit of Neil Young's neurotic emphasis. For You is a tender serenade obtained by overlapping her floating vocals with the impressionist creaking of the guitar. The whisper of One Red Year on the lugubrious organ phrases evokes a mysterious psychedelic ceremony. The Sordid Light Of Morning is simply a buzzing emission of distortions. Sunshower is like a counterpart to all these styles, but precisely in hearing them all together in one song we get the feeling that Bailiff would do better focusing on Young's "acid" style. The nine minutes of Beautiful Soul close the album in an ethereal mood.

Hour Of The Trace (Kranky, 1999), again a collaboration with Alan Sparhawk, refines the formula. Bailiff focuses on a form of litany, first excessively slowed down and then filled with sonic eccentricities. In this form she truly excels. If Crush's minimalist vortex makes you think for a second that Bailiff simply aims at apeing Laurie Anderson, Toska clarifies the intent: the true protagonist of the album is Bailiff's icy whisper, sort of asleep in a perennial trance. The album is downhill, from a sonic point of view: After Hours is like a children's singalong on a distorted guitar, but Amnesia alrady sinks in catalectic stillness: a funereal beat surfaces over an hallucinate void, together with spectral wails of guitar, and eventually Bailiff's whisper fades away in a dream. Warren is as slow, but relies on a solemn pace and an imposing wall of organ chords. Across The Miles is a lullaby that resonates of Nico's sweetest moments with the Velvet Underground, just at half the speed. These are weak melodies, left adrift in scanty harmonies, the musical equivalent of aborted foetuses, songs that die before being born.
Half of the album is taken by Perception, a twenty-minute composition which begins like a suite of avantgarde electronics and after seven minutes detonates in a colossal guitar riff (and towards the end turns into a minimalist raga). Bailiff may be trying to tell us she's not just a singer songwriter.

Jessica Bailiff is also a member of Ghostcar The Radio Entro For Bionic Ears.

Maybe Tomorrow and Renee (the two sides of the 2001 Resonant single) are quirky experiments, respectively, with dance beats and with voice.

Jessica Bailiff (Kranky, 2002) opens a new front, by introducing a theory of art as a childish/sophisticated dichotomy. This is basically consistent with the previous albums, although it emphasizes the introspective aspects and downplays the musical aspects. The songs are, mostly, stripped down, and her angelic litanies often sound like psychedelic ballads; not because they refer to drugs, but simply because they are oddly devoid of structure.
The lullabies Swallowed and The Hiding Place are simultaneously dreamy and fearful, exuding nostalgia and insecurity while evoking Freudian nightmares. Big Hill is almost a religious hymn sung (basically) a cappella in the whispered register of a child who is playing alone. The Thief is even weaker, the words hardly uttered at all, more like breathing than singing, while guitar and piano repeat a simple pattern that sounds like an Indian invocation. Despite the apparent simplicity, Bailiff's music is an exercise in subtlety: Hour Of The Traces sounds like the ghostly version of a medieval "chanson", Mary is an ecstatic psalm that resonates with a mantra-like droning effect. In the rarified You Were So Close an emotion-less strummed guitar underpins the dilated vocals while alien sounds frolic in the background. Loud guitar distortions populate the lunar soundscape of Disappear. These lieder for guitar and noises are amazingly effective at reducing the emotional intensity while doubling the emotional disorientation. It is a mesmerizing experiment in cognitive psychology that leaves the listener wondering what happened. Only once does Bailiff use her technique to craft a conventionally Mazzy Star-ian, slo-core ballad, in the lengthy Time Is An Echo. The rest is simply supernatural.

Clear Horizon (Kranky, 2003) is a collaboration between Jessica Bailiff and Flying Saucer Attack's guitarist David Pearce. Bailiff crafts simple, whispered folkish tales such as Watching the Sea (for guitar, piano and sound effects) and For Days (for solo guitar and whispers), while Pearce adds a couple of ambient instrumental vignettes (Distortion Song, Dusk). The luminous Death's Dance for reverbs of sloppily-strummed guitar, monk choir and rattling percussions, and the booming syncopated drums and out-of-sync counterpoint of Open Road are a welcome relief from this pattern. The most spiritual and abstract moment comes when the two voices intone a hymn-like wail amidst a shower of percussions in Sunrise Drift. Ultimately, this album sounds like what it is: a remote collaboration between two diverse artists who hardly know each other.

Eau Claire is a collaboration with Rachel Goldstar.

Northern Song Dynasty is a collaboration with Jesse Edwards.

Feels Like Home (Kranky, 2006), Bailiff's first solo album in four years, resumes her project of skeletal trance-like visions/confessions. What's Inside Your Mind? sets the pace with a (slightly Celtic) angelic whisper and tender guitar strumming that seem to wander aimlessly. Bailiff's disorienting logic is best appreciated in the way the gentle nursery-rhyme refrain of We Were Once stops and resumes, allowing room for the crystal tones and tiny drones of the accompaniment (not to mention the virtually unrelated instrumental coda), or in the way the soaring leitmotiv of Spiral Dream appears all of a sudden out of a fog of piano notes, field recordings and drones, or in the way the harmless, casual melody of Evidence grows rapidly into a poppy ditty (that lasts only a few seconds beyond its zenith). A more straightforward organization characterizes Lakeside Blues, that sounds like a medieval madrigal thanks to the purest of delivery and the most elegant of refrain, Brother La, that evokes the enthusiasm of a child playing in a green field, and Pressing (at four minutes one of the longest songs), that, by comparison, boasts the depth of a liturgical hymn. The romantic With You appropriately closes an album that, until the previous song, was as cryptic as a female heart can be.
Despite the "oddities", Bailiff's music is rarely "difficult" or experimental. The most challenging moment comes when the "om" of If We Could emerges from an electronic wall of noise. The instrumental Cinq, instead, simply applies her oblique intelligence of simple, touching sounds to a wordless context.
Bailiff continues to sharpen her aesthetic persona: a sweeter version of Nick Drake's solipsistic paranoia, a female version of Donovan's naive folk music, a homely version of Enya's magical fairy-tale chants.

Old Things (Morc, 2007) collects rare and unreleased material.

At the Down-turned Jagged Rim of the Sky (Kranky, 2012) was her most regular set of songs yet.