Judging from the video to the song Out In The Open by the Finish band Trees, the world in still OK in Savonlinna, Finland. You see the band playing their folk rock, immersed in golden, autumnal light, in a house by a lake. They walk through meadows and a sunflower field. They sit in a cornfield. They smoke cigarettes and drink beer on a porch. The video has a very hippyish vibe, you even see the band members collecting flowers. However, except for one scene, there are no smiling, happy faces. Everybody looks rather grave. You also see wilted flowers and the silhouette of a crucifix. Briefly, but still. The crucifix is not hanging upside down, I feel I have to add, as you might have expected of a band being reviewed on this site.
After watching the video for the first time, I wondered how this ended up with us. The fact that you see the band members picking flowers was just a tad too much. The music and the vibe were so very different from the majority of the material we review here. Now, after I’ve listed to the album several times, I think that the Trees are fine with us. But let’s start at the beginning.
Trees are a quartet from Savonlinna, Finland, formed in 2016 and this is their debut album. They stem from the same circle of friends and artists as Paavoharju (a musical collective of ascetic, born-again Christians, shocking, I know), whose mastermind Lauri Ainala shot and directed the video for Out In The Open. Apart from singer-songwriter Santeri Vänttinen, Trees are built of Joose Keskitalo (guitar and backing vocals, a prominent solo artist as well), Teemu Muikku (bass) and Jani Lamberg (drums). The music the quartet makes draws inspiration from classic US folk rock of the 60s in the vein of The Byrds, The Band and Neil Young.
If the names above don’t ring a bell, how about Bob Dylan? I’d also like to call to your mind the fact that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel prize in literature in 2016. Why is that important? Because with this kind of music, lyrics really matter. The musical accompaniment is often minimal and acoustic. On the album at hand, apart from the instruments listed above, you can hear humming, percussion instruments, a mouth organ, a flute and an accordion.
Out In The Open is certainly the album’s happiest song, but its vibe is not representative for the album. All of the other songs have a dark tinge. In some songs it is stronger, in others weaker, but it is always present. The band calls it “a vaguely apocalyptic eastern Finnish approach.” You can also call it resignation or disillusionment. And even Out In The Open has a bit of darkness, although only at the very end. After what you think are the song’s final tunes, you hear the rattling of a tambourine, sounding a bit like a rattle snake, just to remind you that nature has its dangers too. The lyrics of the very next track, a bluesy piece titled Forest, state that “there is something evil waiting for us / deep in the forest unknown”.
The Trees’ lyrics, in general, are well written and often deal with interpersonal relationships. The song with the darkest atmosphere and my favourite (no surprises here) is Waltz. It has a tribal, pagan feel to it that is created, in the beginning, solely by percussion and vocals. You get the impression that some kind of ritual is going on. The lyrics, constantly repeated like a mantra, are excellent and I’m pretty sure that they’ll stick with me: I can feel the earth spinning around / I know how we rush through space / I have no clue of where we are / And I’ve given up the chase.
So, if you’re open-minded enough for a bit of disillusioned hippy spirit mixed with something apocalyptic, you will enjoy this. I did. The sentiment expressed is not very different from that of other material we review here, it’s just subtler, and that’s fine.
(8/10 Slavica)
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