release date: Feb. 23, 2024
format: digital (11 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,88]
producer: Matthew Devenish
label: AATT - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 2. "The Whaler" (4 / 5) - 3. "Town Square" - 4. "Mother-of-pearl Moon" - 5. "This Path Through the Meadow" - 6. "Valdrada" - 8. "Visions of a Stray" - 9. "Field After Field" - 10. "Ypsilon"
[ album playlist ]
16th studio album by And Also the Trees follows 1½ years after The Bone Carver (Sep. 2023) and is like that made with producer Matthew Devenish and to the usual procedure the album is released on the band's own label.
The album shows a will to explore stylistic ground anew, and in that regard this new collection of songs differ from the band's most recent releases, which have all shown a stronger audible bond to the band's origins in a gothic rock setting. Mother-of-Pearl Moon invites us on a more mellow and subtle type of transport, which is both like a movement through different familiar places as well as a journey through time - and not as such back to the 1980s as much as much further back to another Century. Songwriter Simon Jones shapes these poetic pieces with his dark vocal as centre structure coloured by delicate percussion, bass and strings, which takes us through ancient European landscapes, often inspired by an atmosphere you would be likely to locate to 19th Century Paris or London. Originally, the band expressed itself with excessive theatrical postures - the link to a world of plays still lures on all tracks but in a much more refined manner provoking to your stolen attention, because the music cannot lie when it opens up and reveal its true nature. And that's a truly remarkable and fascinating creature they have come up with this time.
Mother-of-pearl Moon is no less than a great release from one of Britain's underestimated acts.
Highly recommended.
[ SputnikMusic 4 / 5 stars ]
[ bandcamp ]
