My Review: The Halo Trees - Where The Deep Ends

 The Halo Trees - Where The Deep Ends

There are places in the soul that seem like silent deserts, waiting for a conversation that can convey companionship, exchange, vibration, determine a possible richness to annihilate the flood of uncertainty those places generate. In such a context The Halo Trees could be all that, a support and presence to generate footholds and a different meaning for one's existence. The band hails from Berlin and incorporates a hypothetical bridge with England, Australia and the United States, as their visual and sonic imagery involves a suitcase constantly full of longings, curiosity and above all melancholy, the feeling that resides in every part of the world, and in the specific case because their music seems to come out of movie soundtracks from the three aforementioned countries and makes the whole thing amalgamated and perfect.   The mystery, the penumbra, the delicacy, the hinted and never devastating power, the asking of questions by making curiosity a starting point, are elements that come out like an autumn rain from these ten compositions, which turn into seeds in the atrium of the heart and the head, to oxygenate with reality and wisdom our boundless exaggerations, since wisdom, balance and poetry are the trademark of the quartet from the German capital. The ductility in visiting different musical genres is amazing but even more so is the fact that their style is confirmed, and this recognizability becomes their passport, to confirm that uniqueness that is often, instead, lost in these cases.  Uncertainty, confusion, the drudgery of living, presence, the will to know how to manoeuvre words, the insecurity of excessive information that destabilizes, the three-dimensionality of things are some of the topics that the skillful Sascha Blach knows how to address, for a sonic combination that hypnotizes by precision, in a mental rather than physical dance that definitely conquers. One experiences ecstatic paralysis with the baritone voice, that approach that often reminds us of Stuart A. Staples with his Tindersticks and Liam Mckahey and the Cousteau.

But to generate a list of comparisons is debasing, unnecessary: in this album we are faced with a deep belonging to pride aimed at presenting uniqueness and difference. One often feels the need to embrace these compositions because one immediately feels the debt to the beauty, richness and benefit that listening generates, to enter fairy tales in which the end does not come because of their ability to permeate everything at the foot of heaven, where everything begins and nothing dies...  One weeps since in this musical cylinder the atmosphere becomes a refuge, as well as a delicious dirty sweetness to be kept segregated in the depths of one's considerations. The production manages to make perfect the high stylistic figure of the writing, a glue, a shield, a protection towards these ten tears with a smile that make Where The Deep Ends a screen to keep the right distance from what oppresses. Songs that clear the air of polluted atoms and suspend it, as in a fairy tale that switches from fantasy style to noir, to legitimize their thirst for exposure. 

They cross decades, knocking on the door of memory as well as that of a future they know how to tease, to lay brick upon brick, without forgetting the objectivity of the deception of living.

The depth and wise decision to arrange the songs with a methodology reminiscent of classical music gives the whole an intoxicating fragrance. Each instrument seems to shoulder the reception of that which lends mystery and a great evocative expression: it can be the violin as well as the use of synths that stun with quality and precision in a remarkable balancing act.  As suggested in the lyrics of the final song, we are guests, but more importantly, witnesses to a quality that is out of the ordinary, and it is astonishing how the group, with the third album, imparts a sense of the continuous need for listening, to become a blotting paper, to enter into a contract with addiction, a drug that is not addictive but beneficial.  

Listening turns into journeys where slowness generates the extension of imagination, the internalization and projection of images that emerge elegantly from stories that are written to become our chance to mate with magic...

So whether it's Alt-Pop, Post-Punk, Progressive, Alternative we don't care and that's not why we can love them: we will be constantly devoted to their being a black and white cinematic film, able to ridicule our fake colors by making this album govern and discipline us, giving their art the sceptre of command...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

5th June 2024

COP International

https://thehalotrees.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-deep-ends-album-2024