..SHE HOLDS IT IN HER ARMS..



CONGRATULATIONS! You all made it through the tribute week, all 5 of you! WOOHOO!

Anyways my week has been a bit hellish so I'll spare you the poetic verse about this band, if you like em then you like em and if not, to hell with ya! So in closing I hope that you have been inspired to dig them out and listen to the albums and enjoy those things that make me so happy when I listen to them...

What can I say right now? Well Im desperately trying to figure out how I am going to get to Paris Thanksgiving weekend, and I tell you it hurts because I have those days off and I know airfare is cheap then. I have been wanting to go for a while and see them. I really want to go to this, I VERY!!! much want to go....Yes I said Paris...and Yes, I live in Oakland, but it can be done...I just need to get to New York on standby and leave from there...Oh it can be done! Im in therapy, Im supposed to be more spontaneous...

Im a nut.

Please come with me! I would adore it ever so....
:)

Oh yeah....the link of things! hee hee, ENJOY some more demos and singles!

LINK : { 'shrine' }

..I WALK THE GHOST OF ALABASTER STREET..


And here we are in the third down of preferred albums. And Also The Trees 1992 release Green Is The Sea (what color were her eyes and the dress? hee hee) Obviously I am not doing a full discographical retrospect but only pinpointing those things that I am most fond of as they pertain to me in this retrospect...this 5 business day retrospect.

The thing that I adore most about this album is the overall feeling of an uplifting nature. I will say that I always start this album at track 2 because I am such not the fan of Valentino, the song annoys me. But this album just makes me feel warm and not in an Im cold and feel warm. I can only liken it to eating something really wonderful that makes you feel like your whole body is radiating a very delightfully rich glow that you could bask in if you were so inclined to lay within yourself.

A great deal of the theatrics have vanished in this album and perhaps that is why I feel that it moves so much more fluidly and resonates a more calmer feeling than the turbulent versus the smooth. There is a still a stoic nature to much of this album for me that I still feel in touch with a nocturnal environment, but it isn't one of despair, its almost of an embracing nature. Dare that I say, that its the snow time Trees album.

I sit here listening to The Fruit Room and glancing at a photo I have of Central Park covered with snow, it seems so utterly perfect. A meandering dream of white scattering amongst you as if in a snow globe. That type of perfect delight that can only be experienced as you appreciate the smallest of things...although there is no jasmine growing into this landscape...

I will always wonder how these bands are felt by those who don't have the background of the northeast of the US to affiliate it with. I mean, I know the feelings of a one in particular, but for others...I associate landscape so much with the music I listen to, that what is it like if you are a huge AATT fan but live in Arizona? Or if you live in Kansas....or say you live in Tokyo, or Greece...what is it like...Or does stuff like this just aim to empathize with those who live in the UK and areas like it...is that why they always play in Belgium and Paris, because of the similar UK weather...

I mean even reflective in the name of the band, its a nature source of inspiration, from the line of the infamous poem they penned the name from. Okay, perhaps I am once again going too far with this, said she of The tremendous Risk for Mr Ferdico...this song has always made me a bit frantic. And its a good instrumental, but not one I would always notate, but I should, more.

LINK : {Her Crescent Figure Through Green Waters}

just a quick catch up on those blissful aatt instrumentals i adore so very much

..Protecting Me / Protecting Me / Protecting Me..

DEMOS! DEMOS!! DEMOS!!

Its the middle of the week in my tribute so I felt obliged to post some rare material to check out if you wish...The Trees demo's and sessions from 1980-1982.

Its a rather good collection of recordings, given that they are early and the production level is alright, but when it comes to sessions, does anyone really want studio precision recording? I certainly don't! I would definitely get these because I like the slightly jazzy number on Lady D'Arbanville....makes you want to mosey about just a bit.

LINK : {You Will Be My Fill}

..OUR EYES ARE SEARCHING, SEARCHING, STILL..



Ah yes, THE album! The Millpond Years is the album that attracts those with a fondness for reverie and waxing poetic on a daily basis. Those whom ooze and soak in nostalgia for pretty much every daily activity, or at least romanticize that they are. Perhaps within their laments of why they can't or how they should but feel indifferent to the place that forces them to be real and not creatively inspired to dream.

Filled with drama and lush theatrics, somehow I can still listen to this album whilst making attempts to be pleasantly put to sleep at night. The landscape rich with shadows of night, and afternoons brimming with moisture and fog thickened streets, and somewhere you look up and notice that everyone about you is dressed in a time far older than where you just were. Perhaps now you find yourself holding a whithered paper and reading about things that dont even make sense, or perhaps you are just sitting on the cobble and feeling really pissed about the social environment you are stuck in. So you dream off into the beautiful abyss and make the world in your toxic mind a better place to live in, enter Shaletown and invisible land that Jeffrey has escaped to, oh charcoal thought ladened Count Jeffrey.

At least perhaps it seems better, or maybe he and i both remove the ash from our eyes and realize nowhere is truly better. Are we all in the myth that things get better?

Clearly this is an album that holds a very sinister and dark ambiance about it, but I did say poetic was part of this, and with that, there must be the counter to this tar stained dream. The beauty lies in the sadness that we, as nostalgic fools, are always inclined towards. From The Silver Frost and L'Unica Strada are perhaps two of the greatest instrumentals ever penned and recorded as part of an album that the instrumental didnt feel forced to prove that "we can do an instrumental" and then tagged on the end. There is something beyond stirring that everytime I listen to these two, specifically, I truly am moved to another emotional place and while I feel a bit sad, there is always something hopeful stirring out upon the reaches of where everything eventually goes towards. In that the shimmering beam that we all hope for while the rest of everything feels like shit, is preserved for optimism.

So is this album truly so dark and miserable, or is it a fragmented journey of the possibilities that are. Is the time of indecision and discovery what is meant by the millpond. Something that is not so pretty but still allows growth of even the slightest?
millpond - a pond formed by damming a stream to provide a head of water to turn a mill wheel
While it prevents and forces a hault it still manages to create and isn't it true that within creation something must exist that blossoms...

Maybe its just me being overly philosophical...However these are my thoughts while I listen to this album and feel really thrilled that I have these moments to reflect and think of those others whom have cherished them as much as I. To those who have scoffed, so be it. Some things aren't for everyone. Thankfully, these things are for me.

LINK : Time Goes Through Their Hands

..A YOUNG MAN AND HIS BRIDE..


Oh this band, this band that I have mocked for being one of the most lyrically pretencious I know. This band that I have created mocked lyrics around and quoted one line and one line over and over..."Cotton forgotten summer dress..."
But underneathe the amusement I have at times with this band, like all of my favorites that I make jokes with, I simply adore And Also The Trees.

I confess that sometimes the vocals are a bit over the top for me, but the music...I have to say that hands down, no one does what they do. While there are so many bands out there that I love and that have many akin to them, for some reason there are a few that many adore, and yet, not one seems to have gotten the blueprint right or made the attempt at all...I feel honored, because a Simon Huw Jones knock off would probably be unbearable, and honestly, I would probably hate it for trying to be something it isn't.

Musically, there is something so time cherished with all of their albums, and upon the later released and this entry posted, The Klaxon, I feel somehow transient in a time of an I don't really know. I have always thought something spanish of this, and perhaps its the percussion and calypso like moments, especially within the track of Johnny Lexington. I feel the haze of an afternoon fading and the dusk on the brink of making its appearance, but no one has gotten upset. Everything seems to push further into the days events that just makes the enjoyment factor a bit moodier but richer.

Then there is the brilliance of the silhouetting guitars by J. Jones, and as yet another shimmering delight of sparkle dancing in the stark nature that he seems to be the master of. Oh gosh I want other things in this musical world to sound like this, why no one ever sites him as a creative force in this industry/genre is beyond me.

Don't get me wrong, I mean like any Trees album, the melancholy, sombre and underlying bitterness is there, but in tone of the arrangements, its something that has always felt still very warm to me. Its like edging your body up into the pushed creases of your duvet and finding that warm spot and being warmed by the heat stroked sun outside that beams upon you. Then you take that visual and magnify it into a perfect mental moment of engaged activity and well, for me, it is beyond amazing.

The Klaxon was the first album I owned by AATT, and while many tend to site the eponymous release as the best, which is then set against the other school of Trees fans who site The Millpond Years, which I have to state I am a member of the latter, I think this album is perhaps my second favorite.

I feel like spinning through a room of Terracotta and then sinking into a gazeful curiosity from a balcony, with a fine glass of red...yes I said it. You know what follows, yes, and a fine tobacco product.

LINK : [ as he walks far from this town ]