We Are Trees - Boyfriend

Label: Self released Release date: 23/08/10 Official Site Well, here we are with 2010 more than halfway over. I’m sure by now all the writers here at The 405 and some of our readers have begun to calculate what may be in their top lists of the year. How many of you wish that there was a Veckatimest for this year? Well, fret not for somebody heard your pleas and took the idea behind the sound of the album and mangled it! Yes, We Are Trees are indebted to Chris Taylor, but have added a touch of “look, I’m alone in my bedroom” to the formula, resulting in a frustratingly banal EP. Fooled you there, what with all the name dropping and comparing – right? Bollocks…well, just listen to this fucking EP. The drums are all tom heavy, washed in reverb, and use tons of rim clicks (paging Mr. Bear). Hell, even the main vocals sound a little Daniel Rossen (especially on the track fittingly named ‘Daniel’), and overall the sound of this EP is what ruins it. The lyrics are pretty standard and boring, based on what could be discerned through the wash of ‘verb that dominates this album more than the guitars. “…I will cry until you wake up…” is supposed to be cathartic and add the quiet part of the song ‘Sunrise Sunset,’ but instead it comes off as a whiny beggar before being consumed yet again by the wash of wannabe Yellow House “Oh”s. I know that this EP (called Boyfriend, by the way) probably will end up capturing people because of these similarities, or maybe I’m just biased because of how goddamn much this sounds like Grizzly Bear. But it’s easy to get hung up on that, seeing as every song has the same structure and sound as a song by GB, all sans that band’s experimentation and creativity. It’s all music informed by better artists that strive to join those echelons, but fails to because of that reason. ‘Daniel’ straddles the line between ‘All We Ask’ and ‘Cloudbusting’ without the sense of space or arrangement present in those songs, instead relying on guitar figures more akin to M. Pyres (but again without the creativity and original sound). Yeah, the augmentation of strings sets the entire band dynamic apart in a way, but it’s just not enough. Arguably the most enjoyable song is the final one, ‘Final Round,’ due to its hybrid of Owen Pallett and Andrew Bird for the opening section before dropping off into solo vocals that ruin the song before jumping into another Grizzly Bush cribber. I hate to sound like I’m just ripping on this disc, but with something so predictable and obvious it’s hard not to focus on the bad aspects here. I honestly would rather listen to Yellow House or Hounds Of Love or even Weather Systems than this, primarily because of the fact that these artists carved out their own niche the old way. We Are Trees falls short because of how much it sounds like a dozen odd artists, from the style of recording to the songwriting. And while I’m sure that sound will change due to the course of creativity, I am dubious as to how much change will occur. Consider (me, ghost) how much you pay for this EP if you like it and want it: nothing. Now it seems a whole lot better.