Slip Into This Damp Coolness
We Are Trees is a moniker for indie artist James Nee, an musician lo-fi crooner from Virginia., this has been a solo project of Nee’s since he was sixteen, when he started making music in his bedroom , though he has talented friends that back him, called Josiah Schlater , Rocky Capizzi and Pearl McReynolds, that eventually become We Are Trees on collective crowd .
Full of lush harmonies, with string arrangements perfectly sync , dreamily psychedelic vocals, the fantastic percussion and a perfect amount of reverb , all form together an luscious catalogue formed by Boyfriend on 2010 , Girlfriend on 2011 ( simply the “other side” to Boyfriend) both available on their bandcamp or through Collective Crown.. Also recorded exclusively for Last FM an Demo EP called “To Build A Mountain”, which shared free , and a Daytrotter Session on 2011. All gives us evocative precious moments thanks to the incredible sensitivity that emanate their music and less is more comes to mind when listening it .
I would like to have the power to portray what i feel when i listen few bands like Sean Moeller from Daytrotter, but you just know, I’m just a music fan, not a writer, So I leave you here her impeccable review, i hope you enjoy it..
Slip Into This Damp Coolness
The only records that were ever lying around the house when I was growing up were those that my quasi audiophile father had stuffed into a cupboard in our occasionally heated, rarely used rec room. It was wood paneled and shut off from the rest of the house, an addition that my grandparents put onto the farm house at some point in the 1970s and remained a remnant from that era, still does. The washer and dryer are out there and somehow it was a room – the only one, since the doors were always closed – where we needed mousetraps. You could tell when one took some poisoned bait and died behind the washing machine, as the stink got bad quickly. This is the room where dad has a monument to his former stereo-loving self. Since he was the only dad I knew growing up who even had a record player, I presumed that the 40-50 albums and his pile of 8-tracks was actually a sizable collection. He had a boxed set of the Beach Boys greatest hits, lots of 5th Dimension, The Association, The Carpenters (which was accrued when he married mom), a copy of Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” and then an assortment of albums that no one would ever admit to having, stuff that you can’t even give away. It was interesting enough to me, as a kid, but I wonder why I wasted the time with much of the stuff that I did on those rainy afternoons when there was little else to do that we hadn’t already done a million times. There wasn’t a ton of stuff in the collection that I could have gravitated to for those times in middle school and high school when I was learning for the first time that the girls that I thought were great or that I wanted for girlfriends (whatever that meant back then) couldn’t have felt any less the same way. It would have been nice if I could have had that resource, or if mom and dad could have pointed me out to that cupboard, ordered me turn the furnace on, let it heat up for 10-15 minutes and then listen to some record that had gotten them through these very same, universal, love-growing pains. It would have been such breezy and effective parenting, but that’s not what happened. The record collection that my children will have at their disposal will give them ample choices for places and voices to turn to if they’re seeking condolence or shelter from the raining and the pouring, or at that point when they’re starting to figure out what they want to be, who they want to be. We’ll be able to point them to albums like “Boyfriend” and “Girlfriend,” both by the incredible, young Virginia Beach, Virginia, band We Are Trees, if they’re caught up in these matters. They’ll be able to slip into this damp coolness. They’ll be able to howl off their sadness, getting right into this new feeling of floating through some amber sunset that makes everything feel a little bit better. You know that nothing’s changing the realness of the disappointment or the fumbling, claustrophobic feeling that’s getting your goat, but this makes things go down more easily. It’s like how there are certain times when you comment to yourself or others around you how this beer – this very typical, unspecial beer – tastes SO good right now. It’s the surroundings, the people, the coldness of the can or bottle, whatever the fuck it is, but this beer is BETTER. The way that James Nee spreads out this sense of cool, this calmness about his matters of love and the need to just get out of here, to drive around, to explore and more, all over these melodic pieces is that good beer. It’s that beer on a good night, no matter what the reason is.
Words by Sean Moeller from Daytrotter
We Are Trees -Boyfriend
released 05 July 2010
James Nee – Guitar, Bass, Vocals
Rocky Capizzi – Violin
Pearl McReynolds – Cello
Josiah Schlater – Percussion
Tracklist
1.Sunrise Sunset 04:44
2.Daniel 03:18
3.Dear Chan Marshall 04:04
4.Final Round 04:06
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We Are Trees – Girlfriend
released 03 March 2011
James Nee – vocals, bass, and guitar
Josiah Schlater – drums and percussion
A few additional violin tracks done by Rocky Capizzi on 1, 2, and 3.
Produced and Written by James Nee
Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Mark Padgett
Additional Recording by Allen Bergendahl
Photography by Liz Swain
Modeling by Liz Swain
Photo Edits by Genesis Martinez
Tracklist
1.Teenage Heartbreak 04:55
2.Colorado 03:25
3.Girlfriend 02:59
4.You 02:08
5.I Don’t Believe In Love 03:30
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We Are Trees
Daytrotter Session
released Nov 9, 2011
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Recording engineered by Mike Gentry
Tracklist
1Welcome to Daytrotter
2Colorado
3I Don’t Believe In Love
4Daniel
5Teenage Heartbreak
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We Are Trees – I Don’t Believe In Love from Illusive Media on Vimeo.
As clarification, I wrote the strings parts for all the tracks I recorded on. James wrote the songs themselves, registered them, and gave us not one dime in royalties for them. Not even a small percentage.