wearethelastbeatniks

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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