LOST IN THE TREES play the Drake Hotel Underground Friday (April 6). See listing. Rating: NNN
The second album by North Carolina chamber pop group Lost in the Trees is lush and jam-packed with musically ambitious ideas. You could call its widescreen complexity and depth cinematic, but this isn’t soundtrack music that fades into the background. It’s not surprising that band leader Ari Picker lists Radiohead as one of his main influences, but he adopts only that band’s melodramatic moodiness, trading their electronic experimentation for acoustic orchestration and classical inspiration.
Given that the album was largely written in response to the suicide of Picker’s mother (whose image adorns the cover), it’s surprising how hopeful much of it feels. It might be an album written while grieving, though it’s as much about life as it is about death. A Church feels a little long, and getting through it requires a certain amount of emotional energy, but it’s well worth the effort.
Top track: Neither Here Nor There