Dancing is not an activity one typically associates with the North Carolina orchestral indie-folk band Lost in the Trees, a group that has traditionally been too focused on going for the emotional jugular to worry much about moving listeners' feet. But dancing, in a light spring rain, is exactly what I found myself doing when they rolled out some new songs at famed Carrboro venue Cat's Cradle's block party last May. Their stolid rock drums were newly tinged with a disco tick-tock; an electronic sequencer pulsed out fleet arpeggios beneath the live musicianship. These surprising changes are reflected on fourth LP Past Life, which should still have enough sentimental grist to satisfy old fans while broadening the band's appeal to people who prefer a little more dynamism in their dolor.
Part of the reason for the change is a reduction in personnel from a sextet to a quartet, and the band also worked with an outside producer, Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter, Dirty Projectors), for the first time. In becoming leaner and less hermetic, Lost in the Trees seems to have freed itself from its habitual pomp. There are still the ringing guitars of indie rock, the vaporous harmonies of choral music, and the vigorous string and piano arrangements of classical. And as always, bandleader Ari Picker's lofty tenor is a pleasure to hear, especially as it rises over the prickling guitar of album highlight "Daunting Friend". But while it was always a stretch to call a six-piece "orchestral," this chamber-music-sized lineup definitely sheds the excess the term might imply, and while Picker is a canny writer for strings and piano, he seems more focused on giving the songs stiff spines than frilly embroideries. The resulting music is refreshingly streamlined and direct.
The atmospheric "Excos" opens the album on a familiar note, with shimmering, panning cymbals and a slow curl of piano opening out from the slightly distorted choral lines of Emma Nadeau. But the band's new look quickly presents itself on the title track, an anthem taut with lyrical electric guitar work and a juddering electronic undercarriage. The thick, pumping bass of songs such as "Lady in White" and "Wake" introduces a facet that has seldom been heard in Lost in the Trees' chaste music—sex—while standout deep cut "Sun" shows that they can also bring their new energy to the kind of feather-light songs on which they made their name. The lyrics still strike at grand notes: Angels zip around, light comes out of hearts, and birds, somehow, come out of eyes. But death, still lurking after the difficult memorial album A Church That Fits Our Needs, adds a newly earned gravity and wisdom to the proceedings without being the focus.
Picker remains good at creating a sense of towering scale and charged atmosphere, and the heavenly light that suffuses his music takes on a more humble and terrestrial hue, for the better. Picker sounds revivified, as if he's having more fun, and the feeling is mutual. After they've spent so long swirling high up in the rarified air, it's exciting to hear Lost in the Trees planting their music so firmly in the body, their feet on the ground, tapping.
