Since their early beginnings as post-punk novices at the dawn of the 1980s, England’s And Also the Trees have steadily evolved in their trade of goth-inspired rock. The band’s earliest incarnation, comprised of two sets of brothers – singer Simon Huw Jones and guitarist Justin Jones, along with drummer Nick Havas, and bassist Graham Havas – proved possibly the noisiest thing to come out of their quiet village in Worcestershire.
Exploring a barnstorming punk-rock that took its cues from the many bands that had a foothold in Britain’s punk scene, including the Cure and Bauhaus, And Also the Trees were not inattentive to their environs, which impelled such Romantic writers like the Brontës and Thomas Hardy to produce works of pastoral gothic romance. Equally Romantic in their compositions, the band cut swathes in Britain’s burgeoning post-punk scene with Simon’s darkly Byronic stanzas describing the horror and beauty of England’s natural surroundings.
The band’s endeavors to generate a style rooted as much in the caterwauling ruckus of punk as they were in the bucolic verses of Wordsworth and the aforementioned Byron caught the ear and imagination of Lol Tolhurst, founding member and drummer/keyboardist of the Cure. Impressed with the band’s approach, Tolhurst came on board for production duties on the band’s self-titled 1984 debut album, a collection of songs quavering majestically with the squalls of a pounding rhythm section, and Simon’s intense, almost frightening, declarations.
The band’s follow-up to their debut and best-known work to date, Virus Meadow, would be released in 1986, establishing their musical blueprint of lean rhythms and billowing atmospheres. Since their first two efforts, And Also the Trees have traveled a winding path, evading wider success while continuing to develop their sound. Subsequent releases like The Millpond Years (1988) and Farewell to the Shade (1989) expanded on the gothic dramatics of their post-punk years while interpolating stronger influences of folk. In the 1990s, the band would make a left turn into noirish Americana lounge-jazz for their albums Angelfish (1996) and Silver Soul (1998) before finding their way back into the forests and lowlands of England’s countryside.
Now firmly entrenched in the very soils that yielded the Romantic storms their early recordings precipitated, And Also the Trees have persisted in creating works that stretch their sound tonally to the far-reaching measures of the celestial firmament. Recent albums reveal guitar work that favors tremolo-style playing, in which the reverb endlessly trills and echoes. The vocals, now subdued and wrested free from their post-punk trappings, have deeper command and, therefore, greater sidereal power. Between the bass and drums, the skeletal riffs now engender structures constellational in design.
Featuring a current lineup consisting of Simon and Justin Jones, Paul Hill on drums, Colin Ozanne on keyboards and guitar, and Grant Gordon on bass, And Also the Trees unveils their 17th album, The Devil’s Door. Even starker than their preceding efforts, The Devil’s Door brings listeners down to the eerie, still airs that hover just outside the doors of a raging Hades. Like the best of the band’s later-period work, the songs on this new collection are merely suggestive of the deeper energies that power the furious storms of their music.
At a distance, these songs are witnessed as spinning gales; emotions and chords tangled violently in a dark aural heap, and carried in the vessel of Simon’s bruising baritone. Numbers such as the rippling single, “The Silver Key”, flower handsomely in the quarters of jazz. Meanwhile, “As I Dive” and “Return of the Reapers” are ghostlier meditations, spectral-folk pieces that smolder like flame in the rings of fog. Throughout, And Also the Trees draw from an expanding cache of influences, giving their always preternatural rock even deeper shades of Euro-Blues and Moorland Goth-Pop.
Guitarist Jones intimates that The Devil’s Door may be the closing chapter in the band’s long and entailed history. For a band that has survived simply on the basis of a long-devoted fanbase and little to no chart action, that history is indeed an impressive feat. The brothers Jones give us a purposeful take on what has driven the band over the last 47 years and where they stand with their latest (and possibly final) offering.
And Also the Trees’ roots are in the post-punk movement; the earliest works, the debut album through to 1994’s The Klaxon are strongly fixed on the rhythm section. A change occurred around Angelfish, and since then, the band has focused on developing a deeper sense of atmosphere. This means a lot of tremolo-style playing and instruments beyond the usual guitar-bass-drums setup. Perhaps also using the mixing board as an instrument itself, where those atmospheres generated by each of your instruments can be expanded even further. This is especially evident on the newest release, The Devil’s Door.
Please tell us about the band’s gradual shift from a pointedly driving, deep-pocket sound to the heavier ambiance on the later releases.
Justin Jones: There have been a few direction changes along the way. Often, these are triggered by chaotic situations whereby a musician in the group departs. I try to make something positive out of chaos. After all, change can be creative, no matter how much I dislike change.
There were other direction shifts before Angelfish, but as you note this one, I would say there was a kind of “brief” that Simon and I came up with for Angelfish. It was roughly to make an album that was like Edward Hopper’s paintings. It’s the mood of the paintings that we tried to capture. The song “Paradiso” worked quite well, I think.
The Devil’s Door music has its roots mostly in paintings and films. Films and 1960s television were my introduction to music. This seems to have re-emerged as my main creative driving force. I speak for myself here, and although And Also the Trees is a collaboration of musicians, I am the one responsible for directing.
Since the 1980s, we have tried to change the methodology behind our approach to each new album project. It changes from one album to another, so we have no set formula. It’s creatively healthy to mess with the approaches when you can; it sometimes creates obstacles that you need to work around. This way, I hope that each album is individual. I don’t fully understand music, and that’s where the beauty or the magic is, in the grey areas. Inexplicable and mysterious.
I mentioned the use of instruments outside the usual guitar-bass-drums setup, and I notice quite a bit of it on The Devil’s Door (though it is also evident on previous albums). Am I wrong in hearing a more “Mediterranean” influence on the album? There is also a stronger jazz influence that has been growing in your sound these last few albums.
Justin Jones: Quite a lot of And Also the Trees’ recent music has Eastern European-influenced scales going through it. The classic film music composers from the mid-century until the late ’70s are a big influence, as you can probably hear. This is just the music side of things, though, which tends to set the stage for the lyrical work that follows, sometimes changing the direction of the music.
Paul, Colin, and Grant have done a fantastic job with this album. I can’t overstate how important they are with their individual approaches to each piece.
Let’s discuss Simon’s narratives/lyrics on the albums. I recall you, Simon, mentioning Thomas Hardy and English Romanticism as initial influences on the lyrics and themes; that is quite evident in the early works, particularly the debut, Virus Meadow, and The Millpond years. What are some of your influences, past and present?
Simon Huw Jones: It could be anything. I read all kinds of literature now, mainly contemporary, though I read Chekhov and Turgenev last year. I read Cormac McCarthy’s last two novels three times over, which was unusually obsessive of me, but I don’t think any of it has directly influenced my lyrics.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey is a wonderful novel; it took me way up above the earth, where I could then see it in all its beauty in a way I’d never seen it before. As a lyricist or writer, you need to be open to drawing influence from everywhere, absorbing as much as you can, and hoping some of it comes out well.
What is The Devil’s Door about in terms of theme and sound? What experiences drove the writing and recording this time around?
Justin Jones: At the start, I was thinking the album project was going to be like a Fellini film, which has a non-linear structure but was a series of loosely connected scenes. I also had an idea that each piece was a painting hung in a room or gallery. So, a few of the pieces started out titled after paintings I had seen.
This was sometimes explored in the lyric, and at other times, the working titles influenced its direction. My feeling was that this might be the last And Also the Trees album, or at least the end of a significant chapter, so it should feel like an epilogue.
I’m fascinated by how much of your environment informed your sound. Being from Inkberrow Village and forming a band during the punk/post-punk days was considered quite anomalous among the many bands from London, Sheffield, or Leeds, which were hotbeds of the post-punk movement.
What was it like, coming up in Inkberrow as a band during that time and making the kind of music you did? Is Inkberrow still a point of reference as an influence in your current works?
Simon Huw Jones: Inkberrow was the village nearest to us. It is no longer such an interesting place and, in fact, what influenced us and me, in particular, was the surrounding countryside and its history. It wasn’t immediately obvious that this was where we would find a lot of inspiration, but gradually we came to see that that landscape and its history, and our unusual circumstances – living in an ancient farmhouse in a hamlet at the bottom of a dead-end lane – were what we had for inspiration, whether we liked it or not.
It was what we knew, what we had taken for granted for years, and then came to see in a different way and eventually came to love. This closeness to nature and a kind of solitude have stayed with us. We don’t forget it. It is a part of us and a part of our music.
Justin Jones: Yes, background is, of course, part of your makeup. It should be. You make the best of what you have around you and reflect that in your creative work. We were stuck out in the middle of nowhere, but we weren’t far from Birmingham, which lay about an hour’s drive away, so there was some cultural relief. Malvern, likewise, brought bands in from around the country, so we saw those London/Manchester/etc. bands as they passed by.
We were brought together by chance as a group in Worcestershire, largely because we didn’t have anything to do and were quite creative. Boredom can be useful; that fact has largely been forgotten today. The English countryside is/was probably more important to Simon than me for creativity, although going back there to work on recording, which I have been doing, probably influences the feel of these records.
It’s hard not to be influenced by the place where we record. We could walk up to the barn along a pear tree-lined track, with the crows fighting in the trees. England can be very beautiful.
Your live shows are quite evocative and visual. A lot of the time, the venues you play in augment the atmospheres you evoke in your music, such as the beautifully baroque La Chapelle des Carmélites, where you played in 2009. Also, there’s the quasi-18th-century attire that Simon adorned at La Dolce in Switzerland and at the Hot-Point Festival, once again in Switzerland, in 1986 and ’89, respectively.
There is so much more that goes on the stage, in terms of what you are trying to project with both sound and theme; clearly, the dramatic elements, perhaps literary influences, extend themselves on stage. What are your thoughts and ideas about how you develop your live performances, and how you present yourselves onstage?
Simon Huw Jones: Our dress is toned down from what it was back in the ’80s/early ’90s. It was a “look” we created as an alternative to the way other bands dressed. It was all stuff we’d found in charity and junk shops, but we didn’t want it to be just dressing up for the stage, so we wore those clothes all the time.
I still do, actually. I’m sitting here in a high-collared white shirt and waistcoat, and these are the only type of clothes I have. It’s a bit eccentric, I suppose, especially here in Geneva, where almost everyone dresses the same in their boring, comfy clothes: puff jackets and jogging pants, or track suit bottoms, or whatever the hell you call them with a double line down the leg. That’s the men. Women dress a bit better.
Anyway, we care about how we present ourselves as a band, but it’s toned down compared to before. As far as our performances are concerned, we put in a lot of energy and concentration and have a great respect for the music. It’s not an act; it’s five musicians totally immersed and focused. I can’t speak for myself, but the musicians are great. We’re a really good live band.
Going back to the beginning, what do you remember of how you were received by both the press and the audiences during your early years in the ’80s? How does it compare to the kind of reception you receive now, today, as a band of 47 years?
Simon Huw Jones: Like all bands, we had to win our audiences over when we first started, and that’s not easy when you’re not playing standard “havin’ a good time” music. Often, back then, we were putting too much, emotionally, into our performances, particularly me, and it was freaking British audiences out, or making them uncomfortable.
It was only when we went and played in mainland Europe that we found audiences who accepted and appreciated us. We slowly learnt to break down that invisible wall between them and us. It’s very different now, we have some great audiences, including in England, and there is a real affinity and a mutual respect. It’s a very good feeling. It’s important to us.