Philo / Pgd
2002
The Speed of Trees
About This Album
The Speed of Trees once again confirms Ellis Paul's standing among the very best singer/songwriters to emerge from Boston in the 1990s, a decade in which that city became the nation's capital of contemporary folk music. With insightfully upbeat lyrics and melodies that soar, surprise, and stick to the brain, the songwriting on this album represents a significant improvement on Translucent Soul, Paul's prior major-studio effort for Philo Records. The earlier album was sharply produced by Jerry Marotta, but its introspective songs were uncharacteristically repetitive and sometimes overly sentimental. The follow-up, released fully four years later, suffers from the reverse problem. The Speed of Trees reunites Paul with Stories producer Duke Levine, an electric guitar specialist who has tended to favor bland folk-rock arrangements that obscure the crisp acoustic guitar style that is one of Paul's strengths. With The Speed of Trees, Levine's shortcomings lie not so much in instrumentation as pace. Though Paul's guitars are still sometimes overpowered by Levine's, most of these songs are presented in creative settings that utilize both acoustic and electric instruments.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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