Trees – On The Shore (LP)

It’s now over fifty years since Trees’ formation, a band who helped define ‘Acid Folk’, creating a sub-category in the lexicon of record dealers and music critics alike.

Released just months after their debut second album, ‘On The Shore’ sees a shift from the first record into something darker and more ambivalent with an arcane Englishness.The product of an era characterised by clunky polemic, arcadian sentimentality or English fuzzy-felt surrealism, the album, like all classic records, is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Opening with ‘Soldiers Three’, learned from Dave Swarbrick, the album includes another traditional tune and one of the definitive moments in English folk rock ‘Polly On The Shore’ alongside ’Sally Free and Easy’ and ‘Streets of Derry’.