Tall Tall Trees | Tall Tall Trees

FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Tall Tall Trees
Tall Tall Trees
2009 | Good Neighbor Records
A-

The self-titled debut album from New York’s Tall Tall Trees is a perfect storm of catchy songwriting, spot-on performances, and crisp, inventive production. Even with the unfortunate inclusion of one utterly skippable track, Tall Tall Trees serves as one of the best albums of this year. Dishing up a stew of country, folk, and rock that can safely be tucked under the catch-all umbrella of Americana, Tall Tall Trees manage to create a separate sound for each of the twelve songs on their debut without being too precious or gimmicky about it.

Mike Savino, the band’s singer, principal songwriter, banjo player, and producer, attacks everything with a combination of whimsy and melancholy, allowing him to simultaneously play the role both of the sensitive indie folkie and the sly country rocker. Album opener “Spaceman” describes the state of mind of a loner who expects he must be from another planet, and does it with just enough delicacy to be touching without getting sappy. The sound is warm, punctuated by spacey keyboard noises, and Savino’s vocals have an invitingly open and naïve quality.

Elsewhere, with the song “Shit,” Savino calmly suggests to folks caught up in the rat race, “give away your shit.” Set to a frenzied banjo breakdown and a reggae-ish syncopated beat, the accompanying music is effervescent enough to make the case that there’s more to enjoy in life than money and power. Later, Savino breaks out his best gruff Kris Kristofferson voice for the closer, “The Girl From The Chinese Food Restaurant,” a story about star-crossed love with enough comic twists to make Shel Silverstein proud.

“Instructions For De-Materialization” is the rare example of Tall Tall Trees hopping out of their main folk-rock genre. The song is pure ‘60s bubblegum pop, complete with Beach Boys-style backing harmonies. In lesser hands, this kind of thing would play merely as a clever genre exercise, but the band is clearly invested in it. The mood is infectiously upbeat, and the hook gets stuck in your head.

The polar opposite of this approach, and the absolute low point of this otherwise excellent disc, is the bar-band country rocker “I Got You.” It’s as well-played as anything else on the album, and it’s recorded with a slickness that would allow the song to infiltrate mainstream country radio without any raised eyebrows. Yet it’s also generic, lacking the ingratiating humor and specific personality key to all the other tracks. “I Got You” isn’t half-assed, so much as half-hearted. Savino’s vocal delivery even sounds vaguely bored, where it is normally lively or tenderly emotional.

The rest of the album, however, remains exemplary. Savino and Co. create a wonderfully textured, gleeful, and memorable album with a far more credible country twang than you might expect out of a band from Harlem, with a singer from Long Island.

by Justin Remer