’I'm speaking, but are you listening?’ So ask Tree By Leaf - My advice is to pin back your ears. It is a privilege of music journalism that never diminishes with time – the knowledge that through your work, you occasionally announce the presence of an Artist to a hither- to largely unaware audience. This band definitely fall into that prestigious category – I am excited by this album in a way only Post to Wire and Loomer’s Love Is A Dull Instrument have managed to arouse in me in recent memory. 'Of The Black & The Blue' is the third release from the trio based in Freedom, Maine. 

In addition to Garrett Soucy's songs and guitar playing, he shares lead vocal duties with one Siiri Soucy (cue White Stripes like enquiries at the local Centre for Birth, Deaths & Marriages, or we could of course, just ask them) as well as the keyboards of Clifford Young. For the purposes of this album, producer Ezra Rugg does his Ethan Johns thing & plays drums and bass parts, while the guitars are augmented by some quite stunning contributions from Nick Cody. 

There is something about this record that grabs me & I am struggling to define precisely what it is - a slight problem when it comes to communicating a review, granted. The songs and arrangements are not exactly taking risks, but there are elements that elevate Tree By Leaf way above their peers. Part of it is the synergy between the two Soucy voices. Siiri is no backing vocalist - her delivery on songs such as 'Give It All That You Can' and the self penned 'There Is A Last Time' are forth write and confident. For his part, Garrett has an interesting voice - on 'Never Seems To Leave' he is the image of Jeff Tweedy singing How To Fight Loneliness, while 'The Last Song Luke Seamon Gave To Me' is pure Eitzel. Those comparisons afford me an excellent link into Soucy's writing style, for it is they & perhaps Coner Oberst that come to mind when listening to his work. It is a use of at once personal but still universal narrative that set him toe to toe against anyone writing within the genre at this time. A combination that, perhaps, he best describes himself, 'perfect time, capture meter, rhythm, complex verse & rhyme.... I am beat, you can sing on key’ (Never Seems To Leave). 

On an initial listen, it seems that, for the first half of the record at least, Tree by Leaf are a little too earnest & tightly wrapped... By the second or third time of asking, when you really begin to understand where Soucy is coming from, a realisation dawns that the joke is on the listener 'Join the melancholy chorus, its sad, it's sad, we're awfully sad' is, in fact, a piss take of massive proportions.  In Tree By Leaf, Garrett Soucy has a perfect conduit for his black humour and intriguing lyrics and in Garrett Soucy we have a new writer of whom we must sit up and take notice. 'Rupert Sheldrake’s Favorite' and 'Regardless of the Cost' are as good as anything I have heard all year (& beyond) and, taken as a whole, Of the Black & he Blue suggest a band with unbridled potential, merely a lucky break away from not just a privileged few like me being aware of it. www.treebyleaf.org. PG