Like Trees We Grow Up To Be Satellites (The Backwards America)

Following his departure from esteemed avant-rock collective Tarentel, William Trevor Montgomery donned the Lazarus moniker and began releasing his (sometimes uncomfortably) intimate bedroom recordings. His first album, last year's Songs for an Unborn Sun, was a slow-burning affair with the uncanny ability to make you feel simultaneously better and worse about your life. It was a cavernous sigh of distress and with Like Trees We Grow Up To Be Satellites (The Backwards America), Lazarus follows it with a much-anticipated breath of fresh air. Last fall, Lazarus joined label-mates Explosions in the Sky on a nearly endless North American tour, during which EITS doubled as his back-up band. Later, he took up residence with the band in Austin, TX, and spent nearly every waking moment with them for six months. This record evidences the almost unfathomable growth this experience yielded for Montgomery. Produced by Scott Solter (Tarentel, Court & Spark), Like Trees... is an epic folk-rock masterwork. Influences as disparate as Elvis Costello and Pink Floyd to Nirvana and Bright Eyes take on a whole new light in this grand, orchestral production, which is relentless in its beauty and power. Like fellow SF freak folks Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, Lazarus clears a path between your head and your heart, and you can feel it widening with each listen.