Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
In the hunt the man is transformed into a lowly deer and pursued to the death by the followers and protectors of the woman he has spied in her nakedness, the punishment due for being forward, for being unworthy and sullied in his action; a moral, a reaction that bares allegory from today’s modern world, or one fought with conscious from a mind over 2,000 years old and one to whom the idea of Metamorphosis was forming as he put together the ideals of Roman poetry.
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Liverpool’s She’s In The Trees feels the weight of history upon its musical shoulders as it takes on a parallel of expression to be found within the world of Ovid as it encroaches delicately, unsuspectingly a truth of modern living in this enlightening debut release.
To be held mesmerised as you sit in comfort, to be rapt in the glow of attention on an album enjoying its first throes of freedom, is almost worthy of a tale of transformation in itself, the pen leaving its mark on the soul is in fact an homage to the American author Carson McCullers, and the intense markings offer a meld between times, proof that whilst we believe ourselves to have grown as a species, time has kept us in a thrall of upheaval and kept us on our knees whilst affording us the luxury of seeing the stars.
To be loved is intimate act from the universe, and how we react, whether it is in the poetic verse of ancient times, or the spiritual sensibilities of a period closer to our own, is as much about perceived clarity of expression and human thought; and as tracks such as the opener Prairie Wind, The Changes Between Us, The Things I Love, it Could Have Been Sweeter, and The Last Dice, Amy Scott-Samuel, Jules Watts, and Tristen Appleby combine with character and the silence of shutting out false pressures, so the elation of the piece in its respectful lamination is to be admired, to be praised.
She’s In The Trees’ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is an erudite remembrance of how stories capture the imagination, and whilst tales alter and change over time, they still have the power to transform our thinking.
Ian D. Hall