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George Georgiou (Soundcheck.network) is giving us five really important reasons we should take under consideration and see And Also The Trees on stage, again!!!

*Words by George Georgiou (original text in Soundcheck.network - Greek)

*Cover picture - And Also the Trees live at Les Abattoirs, Cognac, France on November 23, 2019 (by Oil3334)- Wikipedia

*Edit by Achilleas Charitos for ElektroSpank - Online Music Magazine

Their relationship with our country started when they appeared for the first time in May 2004, at the Elfentanz Festival, in the legendary Rodon. Since then they have often honored this relationship they have built with the Greek audience. On Saturday, February 4th, they return to Athens for a performance along with The Legendary Pink Dots, at Gagarin 205, as part of the anniversary events for the 10 years of the Death Disco club's in the music scene of Athens. Having never hidden our special relationship with them, we attempt to briefly outline the significance of another live experience with them.

Even today, after 43 years of journey, they are one of the most precious hidden secrets of the global underground, regardless of idioms and sounds. And it was from the beginning the secret so well hidden behind the foliage of a small village near Birmingham, behind the windows and doors of their "Step Hill" of an old manor house of the 15th century. There two estranged brothers learned early to look beyond each year's harvest and into the images of Inkberrow's horizon, and along with them grew some unique heroes outlined in the lines of their songs.

It is every localist's dream. Raised in a village almost wiped out by the plague epidemic, with the plow often unearthing some grave or remains, they made the influence of the heretical nature a distant source of inspiration. The distinct origins of their music was a powerful differentiator that protected them from being swallowed up by the scenes of the time or their influences. The flag of the polluted meadow continued to fly even as, over the years, they became literally and figuratively citizens of this world, this starting point gave them the impetus and coordinates to continue at the most critical juncture of their journey.

Taking Simon's bucolic poetry as a starting point and Justin's anaplastic, inner synthetic vein, they soon lay out a sidelined, neglected world of silent heroes isolated on their individual adventures. Around this different test of perception, they also often write down episodes of a world that is lost with evolution and its images fade. Personal adventures unfold on cobbled streets, under oil lamps, alongside professions that are permanently lost and monuments of another era that are torn down. The sounds of the lantern in the narrow alleys, and the golden mist in the bell tower streets, and all the understated details of passing images and sounds come alive in a distinct sound. More English than the English themselves, too alternative for their Gothic audience, more cinematic than their New Wave friends could bear, they managed to maintain with their strong personal filter, an expressive territory all their own.

Honest to themselves first, they don't hesitate to move into more urban settings, with their suitcases full of books by Fitzgerald and Hemingway, with William Waghorn's trumpet, and Justin's twangy, jazzy guitar sounds. Through their "Americana" trilogy in the 90's, they found themselves in the treeless American plains, with forgotten jukeboxes on endless avenues, and heroines with fatal noir hairstyles. Fate is losing a considerable part of their more conservative audience, who preferred them still, and narrow-minded aphorisms come along with the first very serious questioning of their future. The same inexorable evolution that extinguished a romantic world that had inspired them for years, takes care with a strange unpredictable justice to justify their insistence on continuing. With a functional drive from their same primordial starting point, they return with their spirit alive and strong, wrapped in a shell of creative timelessness. At the same time the conveniences of the Internet age provide an ideal cushion with the automatic, involuntary organization of their stable core of friends.

All that they have traced musically in this long, turbulent journey that still continues, comes to life in a unique way on the board. With a repertoire of songs that allows surprises but also enforces its eternal constants, they always make sure to cleverly adjust the dynamics of their live shows, often creating a sense of ebb and flow. Beyond the planning of the ritual route, the strict factor of the personal significance of the songs in the particular period ensures what we ultimately always enjoy. An electrifying ensemble of musicians who interact uniquely on stage and a performer who will successively dress all the protagonists of his stories, unleashing them before us in a way that will continue to follow you for a long time…

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