Listening to Scattered Trees’ latest album, Sympathy, has been a curious experience for me. The same disc, under different settings and different circumstances, has been at times nerve-wracking and at times wonderful.
Just now, I have awoken with the third track from Sympathy echoing in my head, the words, “Everyday, you love, then you leave me/ We’ll be the only ones/ We’ll be the only ones to remember…” playing on repeat. These nostalgic words comprise nearly the lyrical totality of “Love And Leave,” but the simplicity works, its pop mechanics doing their part to captivate, its captivation enough to bound me out of bed to write about it.
Listen to “Four Days Straight” – DOWNLOAD MP3
In theory, the entire Sympathy album works on a “love and leave” level. It is wonderful when I allow myself to take its pop songwriting purity for what it is; it is nerve-wracking when I turn music critic and analyze every implicit action. This album feels wonderful, but in a way that might make one feel guilty — like ’90s alternative rock feels wonderful, but makes one feel guilty. Take some electronic-minded influences and vibes from bands like The Postal Service, and you have a fair summation of Scattered Trees.
That description may sound absolutely horrible on paper, but again, this is the dilemma.
Do we not still enjoy Third Eye Blind and The Postal Service immensely when they emerge ironically from their stale depths? The answer is a resigned, “Godammit, yes, we do!” though we may try to shield our enjoyment beneath an exaggerated facade of acceptance. We’ve been told to be ashamed of these things, by the media and by “maturity,” and so we are… but the songwriting catchiness of these creations is undeniable, even years after the fact, and far beyond irony.
Such, then, is the case with Scattered Trees. I could nitpick about how the chorus of “Four Days Straight” has gang vocals that are poppy to the point of cheesiness, or how the verse from “A Conversation About Death On New Years Eve” may in fact bear similarity to parts of Give Up, but what does it even matter, anyway? Far be it from me to critically trod down an album that has the impetus to lodge itself into my brain with such ferocity.
Sympathy sounds like a self-aware, finely-crafted disc that inherently showcases the band’s collective years of influence. Whether those influences are acceptable or deplorable is up to you, but in my mind, good pop music is often about much more than technical analysis; it’s about the way it makes you feel.