NPR Premieres New Lost In The Trees Video

Tuesday February 7, 2012

The second album by celebrated North Carolina collective Lost In The Trees will be released this March 20th via Anti-Records. The group’s extraordinary follow up to All Alone In An Empty House is entitled A Church That Fits Our Needs and is a work of vaulting ambition, a cathedral built on loss and transformation.

The first video for the record is a unique and imaginative clip for the song “Red.” The video was directed and produced by Lost In The Trees and CreatoDestructo Imagery. The images were conceived by the group’s composer, Ari Picker, and are clearly rooted in the record's themes of life, death and renewal. All the band members appear in the video. Violinist Jenavieve Varga (who herself appears in the video wearing nothing but gold body paint) was responsible for make-up and wardrobe.

"This is not an ordinary performance video," explains Jerry Stifelman of CreatoDestructo Imagery, "Instead of just being the band playing, it's based on the vibe of how the song was recorded."

"Red comes from a Frankenstein recording process," says Picker. “The vocals were recorded on lo-fi mics and an old 4-track machine, but the strings were meticulously recorded in this amazing brand new multimillion dollar mega-studio. The video represents this juxtaposition. We would create "spaces" that are based on the different elements of writing/recording the music. The video travels through these spaces, giving an abstract insight to how and in what environment the record was made."

A Church That Fits Our Needs focuses thematically on Picker’s artist mother who took her own life in 2009. While this might sound like a somber affair, the record is anything but. Picker, a classically trained composer, utilizes rhythm as its own emotional language, never losing the propulsive inevitability and vitality of great rock and roll. Above all this is pop music, in the way that “A Day In the Life” or Radiohead’s “No Surprises” are pop music, seeking to present complex ideas to the widest possible audience. At end of day it is exactly the album Picker set out to make, a moving testament to the power of music to heal and transcend.

To watch the visually dazzling video for Lost In The Trees song “Red,” go to NPR's All Songs Considered.

Lost In The Trees Artist Page