REACHING THE DIVINE: TBL's trio. |
With 2005’s Of the Black and Blue, Tree by Leaf went from an interesting folk trio living somewhere Downeast to one of the most respected groups of talent in New England, with a following that began to span continents. The husband-and-wife vocals of Garrett and Siiri Soucy created an ethereal dreamland that alternatingly wrapped you in a warm embrace and forced you frigidly into a cold and driving rain, leaving the listener emotionally drained, but, like a drunk, willing to risk the hangover to go back for more.
Part of that came from a grander ambition, a willingness to go beyond the folked-up strummings of Letters to Rome into indie rock and alt-country without ever abandoning the thrill of melody. Now, on There is a Vine, released next weekend with shows in Rockland and Portland, the band have returned to the religious introspection of Rome while edging even farther from their comfort zone with an aggression you haven’t heard before from Tree by Leaf. It may not deliver as many warm fuzzies as Black and Blue, but it’s more challenging and thought-provoking, and it retains all of that album’s literacy and wit.
Garrett writes all but one of the new songs, and it’s safe to say he’s one of the best lyricists working today. He creates couplets you’re shocked you’ve never heard before (“It’s better to forget than to live with regret”) while dropping the sublime almost effortlessly (“Now he wishes her well, may she live long and prosper/And his is a glow, now, like Madonna’s penumbra”). Couple that with his heart-felt delivery, enough to get you worried for the veins popping out of his neck, and it’s nearly impossible not to be sucked into his tales of existential deliberation.
Nearly every song here deals with humanity’s relationship to God. Right from the album’s outset, the rollicking piano and raucous drums of “Over and Under,” Garrett wonders, “what is delusion?/What is devotion?” And these are questions to which he won’t offer easy answers, just interesting ways to say, “let’s talk about it,” like, “On the end of my cigarette, I’m gonna build a fire/And then we can burn this language down through the telephone wires.”
One thing they know for sure about God? He’s better than George Bush and those who would claim God for their side, and so “His Banner Over Us Is Love” is one of the better protest songs you’ll hear this year. Over a manically strummed acoustic guitar, Garrett declares himself no patriot because he knows “a king whose flag is true, and his spectrum holds no red or blue.”
This isn’t to say, however, that Tree by Leaf have abandoned the love song. “Come on, Babe” delivers again on the promise held out by the sensational “Rupert Sheldrake’s Girl” from last year. With its piano and roadhouse drums, some harmonica and simple bass, it feels, as with much of the album, like a song built for an out-of-the-way bar where a few couples dance with beers behind each other’s back, and the bartender isn’t disappointed if only 15 people walk through the door all night because he knows every one of them by name and hopes he doesn’t have to drive them all home at the end of the night.
