Description
2020, 12″ LP + 7″, Soul Jazz Records.
There’s a lot going on here, and a lot of pure goodness at that. Fans of the Soul Jazz imprint rarely shut up about the label’s output quality, and this latest LP from Trees Speak – their second to date – is a case in point. A record that sounds as though it was raised on some of the finest outsider music from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the whole thing is saturated in pop references but doesn’t come across forced or lazy. You don’t have to listen hard to hear the kind of proto-electro and Krautrock that came from the likes of Can, Popul Vuh and Neu!, John Carpenter’s movie scores or traits of the No Wave movement that took subterranean New York by storm a few decades ago. Stylistically, the result is a sonic place that has as much attitude as it does edge, equal parts grit and groove, funk and rock, soul and sleaze. – Juno
