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Lost in the Trees

All Alone in an Empty House

Anti- Records

Success, by varied definitions is measured by hard work - through sacrifice, perseverance and unintended suffering. Art tends to walk a similar path, the really good art which prevails and continues to resonate. Lost in the Trees' All Alone in an Empty House has become more affecting, and remains just as sincere an album in the time since originally released in 2008 on the Chapel Hill, NC label Trekky Records. Quite simply, its power as an album of music remains.

Lost in the Trees signed to Anti- Records in February 2010 and All Alone in an Empty House was reworked by producer Scott Solter. Two new songs were added to the original album sequence ("A Room Where Your Paintings Hang" and "We Burn the Leaves"), enhancing and extending the experience of Ari Picker's musical collective of folk and classical music.

The material is born from the heartbreaking and dysfunctional household Picker grew up in. Lyrics are taken from arguments in his home and the situations, the abuses, are anything but contrived. Picker sought to harness them into something productive, something creative. An admirer of classical music, Picker endeavored to bring classical and folk music together, injecting melancholic and sometimes catchy folk songs with a style traditionally overlooked by many under thirty. "A Room Where Your Paintings Hang" is a perfect example these two styles meeting with marvelous results.

The album is built upon gentle acoustic guitar and vibrant string playing and underneath exists a patchwork of hard memories and ascetic relationships. The album is awash in grey cloud sentiment and raw honest emotions, all thrown against a scarred canvas. The result is endearing and beautiful. Not knowing about the heartache, one listening would still walk away thinking something is broken here. While All Alone in an Empty House bridges folk and classical music, it transcends what an album is and can be. It operates less as novelty but as an innovative way to communicate stories, to better elevate a listener's emotions.

Haunting stringed instrumental songs serve as a means to pause. "Mvt. I Sketch" and "Mvt. II Sketch" clock in at under ten minutes but their placing feel like moments to reflect, to breath. The title track is tempered with the added sounds of footsteps on leaves, adding tension to a song already taut given its subject matter of sexual abuse. Picker sings "Where is the baby?" repeatedly and the way he sings, in a soft, almost female voice, is haunting and beautiful simultaneously.

All Alone in an Empty House feels like incessant climbing before finally reaching the top, finding a place in which to be comfortable. For all its melancholy there are symbols of strength - wooden walls, artists, paintings, and love. The most prominent is love. In his singing Picker exudes it in the face of heartache. He sings of a painter who's lost their hands on "Song for a Painter" and there's the memorable and radio-ready "Love On My Side" where Picker sings "We're all going to get old and buried in a hole/But my mortal love I give to you." Given the pain adrift here this one song cements humanity, and its ability to love, as the victor. Picker sings, "I never heard someone say love is not an option." No matter how those sentiments came about, in the end, its a moment of light eclipsing dark.

For all the somberness and austerity at work here there is something uplifting about it, perhaps its knowing that Picker won out over hardship or its simply the transfer of the music's power to the listener. All Alone in an Empty House, in the end, feels like a rural storybook with symphonic muscle.

-Brian Tucker