Plunder the Tombs: And Also the Trees – And Also The Trees (Reflex Records, 1984)

Friday, September 24, 2010

And Also the Trees – And Also The Trees (Reflex Records, 1984)

And Also The Trees are a band most people tend to hear little about although they apparently possess a huge cult following.

Formed in Worstershire in 1979, the band quickly developed a strong relationship with The Cure, and started out life as their support act with early demos and a single (Shantell-Future Records, 1983) being produced by The Cure’s drummer / keyboardist Lol Tolhurst.

Their first eponymous full-length followed in 1984, and once again produced by Tolhurst. The result was a very pleasing, although perhaps falling short of exceptional album that given its musical parentage unsurprisingly bore many similarities to the sound utilized by Pornography-era Cure. If some of the album seems initially indifferent, tracks like “So This is Silence”, “Midnight Garden” and “ Impulse of Man” do indeed stand out, the entire effect highlighting the group’s own love with a rural and possibly fantastical England of a time long past.

Things had to change though, with And Also The Trees’ very Cure-like sound reportedly bringing suggestions that the group were nothing but a cheap knock-off, a change of direction seemed in order. The result was the critically acclaimed Virus Meadow (Reflex Records, 1986), a very likeable record in itself, in a similar way to how the excellent Current 93, later Nick Cave or perhaps The Legendary Pink Dots are likeable. Brilliant, but musically speaking however, the album had about as much to do with Goth as hanging out at tractor pulls.

Track Listing:

1. So This is Silence

2. Talk Without Words

3. Midnight Garden

4. The Tease the Tear

5. Impulse of Man

6. Shrine

7. Twilights Pool

8. Out of the Moving Life of Circles

Line Up: Simon Huw Jones (vocals), Justin Jones (guitar), Steven Burrows (bass), Nick Havas (drums)

http://www.andalsothetrees.co.uk/

http://www.myspace.com/andalsothetreesofficial

http://www.myspace.com/aatt_book_project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_also_the_trees

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=and+also+the+trees&aq=f

http://www.last.fm/music/And+Also+the+Trees

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A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….