April 16, 2016
And Also the Trees - Born into the Waves
Virtually all of the music that has been discussed or featured on this blog can be considered one flavor or another of non-idiomatic improvisation. And Also the Trees, however, is an exception. The music of And Also the Trees is decidely composed rather than improvised and the band is certainly idiomatic, falling piecewise into various labels--post punk, gothic, alternative, college rock, etc. Their relevance to the Poison Pie Publishing House is only that the editor became fond of their music in the 1980's and the music, over the ensuing decades, has managed to keep his interest with each subsequent release, including the most recent, Born Into the Waves, released in March, 2016.
The appeal of this band is the pleasing combination of several individually pleasant features, including a propensity for melancholia and other romantic themes, a poetic and fantastical lyrical quality, and a pair of brothers, one possessing a deep, sonorous voice and the other a modestly conventional but all same unique aesthetic for the guitar. As an example of the lyrics, we reproduce the first stanza from the penultimate song on Born Into the Waves, a track titled Boden
In the night Boden moves
Through fields where the moon shone
Geese fly from his mouth
As an example of the music itself, the band has posted the opening track from Born Into the Waves, Your Guess, on youtube. A particularly wonderful live version of the song Whisky Bride, from the previous release of 2012, Hunter Not the Hunted was recorded by the people at La Blogothéque is also recommended and available on youtube. And Also the Trees maintains an official though not very complete or informative page here. There are also relevant pages at discogs.com and, of course, the oracle of all contemporary knowledge, wikipedia.
