The Trees Community The Christ Tree 1975 (original LP)
I downloaded this totally beautiful album a while ago and just listened to it again. It's fucking awesome so I wrote a little blurb on Amazon, as I've been visiting them quite a bit recently for gift buyin. Anyway, 'Hand/Eye' reissued the alb earlier this year on CD. There seems to be both a one disc version and a mini box set. I'm confused. I don't know much about the band, but they are (or were) a bunch of Christians! I haven't really followed the current (or recently past) 'freak' folk scene at all, but this seems complimentary. Except good. Also, it's not heavy on the 'weirdo' wanking at all. It's actually very tightly structured, fairly minimal and very songy. And very haunting and kind of sad, like all good religious-themed music should be. Anyway, this is my review with a few tweaks from the 'original':
Previously raised as a resentful, doubting, and fearful evangelical 'Christian' and now turned aimlessly non-dogmatic atheist, I find this disc to be the perfect succor to my laissez-faire spiritual void. Gorgeous harmonizing and tasteful folksy/psychy bits really put you out in the forest and around the fire in New Hampshire with Brother Jesus. Lovely, and appropriately crisp, clean sanctifying music and if you believe, as I do, that if God existed, he would probably never listen to any contemporary church music (i.e. adolescent acoustic 'singer-songwriter' desperate virgin bullshit) then you can probably get down with this. It's too bad the cover art for this reissue looks like whatever someone scraped off the cutting room floor for an Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians music video circa 12 years ago, but besides that crass disappointment, this is heavenly in a way that should unite the Chosen and the Sceptical alike for the coming egalitarian and non-patriarchical promised land. My similarly atheist Jew girlfriend and I did an hour long lights-out improv in our apartment to this thing*, so if you need any more recommendation then that, you're probably going to Hell. Seriously buy this. Or download so as to avoid the art.
*For the sake of effect, I retained this erroneous claim, when in fact we danced to Ksiezyc's S/T, which I also downloaded and which is also great. But not necessarily Christian, although it could be if God wished it.
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