5 replies to this topic

[Tyler]

NPR has the first single, "Red."

The story says that this album will be less conceptual than All Alone in an Empty House, which was about the disintegration of singer Ari Picker's parents' marriage. The title of the album, though, comes from "A Room Where Your Paintings Hang," a song from All Alone:

Quote

and we will find a church

that fits both of our needs
and we'll forgive ourselves
and forgive our enemies
dump them into the sea

In this video, Picker says that the album is about his mother, who committed suicide, and creating a space for her to do the things she couldn't during her life.

Edited by Tyler, 10 January 2012 - 01:54 PM.

[Tyler]

First Listen.

[Andy Whitman]

This is a great, great album, but it demands time and patience and an attentive listening ear. The bare facts are these: singer/songwriter Ari Picker's mother (whose photo appears on the album cover) lost twin daughters at birth, battled depression and cancer, and took her own life after returning from Ari's wedding. How's that for some familial baggage to carry around?

So Ari wrote an album about her. That's A Church That Fits Our Needs. It is, as you might imagine, heartbreakingly sad, but it's also gloriously life affirming, Sometimes confessional, sometimes poetically abstract, these songs probe at the mystery of a mother, but they are anything but exploitative or sentimental. I suspect that Ari loved her, and found her exasperating. The arrangements -- essentially a string quartet augmented by tuba, piano, and pounding percussion -- recall a mashup of Owen Pallett/Final Fantasy and Arcade Fire. And Picker's ethereal, wispy tenor recalls Andrew Bird and Sufjan Stevens.

It's the opposite of background music, and it's a lovely thing, easily one of my favorites of this still-young year.

Edited by Andy Whitman, 24 March 2012 - 11:03 AM.

[Tyler]

Interesting blog post: Ecclesiology of Lost in the Trees.

[Tyler]

NPR recorded a Lost in the Trees concert a few weeks ago.

[Tyler]

$3.99 on Amazon.