Tall Firs: Tall Firs

Tall Firs
Tall Firs
Ecstatic Peace!

It's hard to glean just how desolate the Band's "Whispering Pines" really is until you are in a thicket of conifers, lost amid the hush of fallen pine needles and stretches of mesmeric straight trunks, your appreciation of their stark natural splendor tempered by your sensation of being hopelessly lost (watching Miller's Crossing gives you a similar feeling). A thatch of such needles spell out the Tall Firs' name on the cover of their recorded debut for Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace! imprint, and the music of the Brooklyn group embodies that conundrum, their sparse sonic exterior mirroring an inner solitude.

Built from the twin reverberating twangs of guitarists Dave Mies and Aaron Mullan, there's plenty of space for their softly-sung warbles as well as small embellishments from guests like free jazz percussionist Chris Corsano. A xylophone twinkles and a rutilant organ drone gives a touch of warmth to the otherwise parched "Go Whiskey." Mies's and Mullan's cracked throats are especially evocative of their label boss on "Us & Our Friends," wherein they muse on a depopulated world where "everyone vanished 'cept for us and our friends." As electronic gurgles and cricket hums surge and overtake the song, it evokes an inhuman landscape. When they cover Quix*O*Tic's saturnine "The Breeze," the guitar amp glow offsets the original's chilly lament to be "At the top of the trees/To be nowhere." Of course, comfort from these pines comes at scarcely a whisper.