(2020) Trees - Trees [50th Anniversary Edition]


Review:
…four-disc anniversary edition includes two new discs of alternate mixes, early demos, BBC session tracks and 2018 live recordings in London. It’s now over fifty years since Trees’ formation, a band who helped define ‘Acid Folk’, creating a sub-category in the lexicon of record dealers and music critics alike. Earth’s new Trees collection brings together both albums adding shiny alternate mixes of key tracks along with a selection of radio sessions and demos, all sounding brighter and cleaner than ever before. Trees first album, ‘The Garden of Jane Delawney’ (1970) snuggles nicely into contemporary nu-folkies’ idea of the genre, and shares some of the pastoral-whimsy that characterised The Incredible String Band or Donovan, offset by some stunning interpretations of traditional material and Bias’ own songs, which were somehow part of the tradition Trees had adopted. Readings of ‘Lady Margaret’, ‘Glasgerion’ and the old standard ‘She Moved Thro’ The Fair’, and the extended fade of the group’s own ‘Road’, presage the explosive instrumental duelling that would come to characterise the follow up album, ‘On the Shore’. There’s a definite shift between the records, the second being darker and more ambivalent. Here Trees don’t tell you what to think. You’re left to formulate your own response to this odd, opaque music. The ‘Streets of Derry’ session version leans into the brain vibrating drone-groove they somehow found at the traditional tune’s centre. ‘Polly On the Shore’, another traditional tune, is one of the definitive moments of English folk rock





Tracklist:
01 - Nothing Special
02 - The Great Silkie
03 - The Garden of Jane Delawney
04 - Lady Margaret
05 - Glasgerion
06 - She Moved Thro' the Fair
07 - Road
08 - Epitaph
09 - Snail's Lament
10 - Soldiers Three
11 - Murdoch
12 - Streets of Derry
13 - Sally Free and Easy
14 - Fool
15 - Adam's Toon
16 - Geordie
17 - While the Iron Is Hot
18 - Little Sadie
19 - Polly On the Shore
20 - Soldiers Three (Remix 2007)
21 - Murdoch (Remix 2007)
22 - Streets of Derry (Remix 2007)
23 - Geordie (Remix 2007)
24 - Polly On the Shore (Remix 2007)
25 - Fool (Remix 2007)
26 - Polly On the Shore (1970 Demo)
27 - Streets of Derry (1970 Demo)
28 - She Moved Thro' the Fair (1969 Demo)
29 - Pretty Polly (1969 Demo)
30 - The Great Silkie (BBC 1970)
31 - Soldiers Three (BBC 1970)
32 - Little Black Cloud (1969 Demo)
33 - Forest Fire (BBC 1970)
34 - She Moved Thro' the Fair (Live at Cafe Oto 2018)
35 - Murdoch (Live at Cafe Oto 2018)
36 - Black Widow (2007 Recording)
37 - Little Black Cloud Suite (2007 Recording)


Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits