reviews:

Pam Berry is a legend. For proof, consult the latest Shins album, on which James Mercer and Co. named a song after her. Berry was a member of Washington, D.C. cult bands Black Tambourine and Glo Worm, and she’s guested on albums by the Clientele, Jasmine Minks and the Lucksmiths. After relocating to London in 1998, she met Joe Brooker (Foxgloves) and eventually formed the Pines. The band’s mix of Brit-folk spook and indie-pop simplicity lasted until 2004 and is surveyed on It’s Been A While, a 20-song collection of singles, compilation appearances and unreleased tracks. Berry’s voice emerges from a fog of reverb, echoing Felt and Mazzy Star. The best songs feature Berry front and center; her sugared plaint on “A Rainy Day” is bolstered only by a spare bass line and plunking acoustic guitar. Even electrified tunes such as the gently rocking “Brand New Life” inhabit a glum, misty space in love with Sandy Denny.  --Magnet

"Why do you stick to me?" questions The Pines' Pam Berry on It's Been A While, a collection of songs from the iconic pondcrossing somberpop romancers. Berry is one of the most recognizable voices in American indiepop, with a dulcet croon and a perfect sense of timing and timbre, and we've stuck with her since her days in the fetishized Black Tambourine though her work with The Pines, with good reason. Though songs like "Marie Claire," "Please Don't Get Married" and "Familiar" catch Berry and Pines-mate Joe Brooker in quite whimsical moods, the mostly drumless record rarely reaches past dreamy blues or melancholy greens, giving it a folksy pop quality that makes it enjoyable mostly in the rain, or over a post-break-up scotch. It's hard to complain when you like every single song on the record, but for reasons unknown, It's Been A While is not a completist artifact. It's a collection of compilation tracks, single and EP cuts and a couple unreleased covers (of which the Young Marble Giants cover is an absolute gem), which begs the question, when will the next collection come out so we can fill in the holes. It may have been better to just package it all together. A must-have record this early in the year when so much crap is coming out, though, is more than welcome.  --Diskant

The Incredibly Shrinking Cover Art: It’s a digital music era phenomena frequently dissected in print and cyberspace under clever banners such as “Run For Cover!” Pundits grind that there was a time when album cover art contextualized the very music it packaged. Seeing Orleans’ Waking and Dreaming reduced to media player proportions is good and righteous, but having to squint to savor the postmodern appropriation of a Peter Saville or the cartoonish savagery of a Derek Riggs…well, that’s when 10K-jpeg miniaturization is deemed unacceptable. So am I antiquated for feeling compelled to agree? Let’s face it: Stacks of tiny, yellow folder icons can’t compete with reveling in the “gloriously parasitic elements of graphic design,” to quote Saville. Or, on a more visceral gnarly level, blanching at a coffin-bursting Eddie claw at the jugular of a gravedigger. The cover art for the Pines’ latest release, the pop-folk compilation It’s Been a While, is in line with the stock-photography nostalgia of Matinée Recordings’ countless singles: a cold-hued portrait of a holiday lodge. And when American Pam Berry’s soaring, alpine vocals open “Milk Bar,” the album cover quickly transforms from knife blue / blinding white ornament to narrative backdrop: lodge-goers stopped in their tracks, eyes cast towards the snowy scalp of a nearby peak, Berry’s voice echoing down with frolic or crushing pang—potent imagery certainly lost if this was Lilliputian-sized artwork. In “Chalet,” our mountain siren grapples with craggy solitude (“Read the old newspapers from last year / I think I’ll go outside today / And throw them on a fire / To leave the world a signal that I’m here”), and her soul’s matter and merit. Through it all, Berry is granite-like in strength, her voice concealing the heartache swelling inside. Much of the track’s pathos comes from the notable absence of the other half of the Pines: English vocalist / guitarist Joe Brooker, who plays the romantic foil on It’s Been a While to perfection. When Berry sings, “Must I find a way / In the forests of the night / While all of you are lighting up the town?,” one imagines her staring down wistfully from her perch at the golden-squared taproom that swallowed her wassailing love. Berry’s isolated vocals also twinkle on the heavy-hearted “Static” and the cover of the Cat’s Miaow’s “Aurora,” but equally appealing are the lighthearted duets with Brooker. Their voices are diametric opposites—hers captivating, transcendent; his pure, earthy in tone. Together, they occupy a realm where doves and dirt willfully bed. On tracks such as “Forget-Me-Nots,” their harmonies give the song an ephemeral quality—a lovers’ trail of side-by-side, footprints disappearing under a blanket of fresh snow. When not crooning, Brooker drives the album with his acoustic playing, blending drowsy chords with sharp, finger-picked melodies. And his electric guitar, harmonica, and accordion parts are sparse, leaving an intimacy reminiscent of labelmates Lovejoy or contemporaries Hobotalk. Couplets such as, “Forget you ever saw me / And go back to baking your bread,” also reveal the duo’s penchant for domestic, bedsit pop. The self-absorption is never dull, however, thanks to all the spit and spark in the relationship. In “MGM,” Berry sings, “Each time we argue I notice your tongue getting sharper,” which prompts Brooker to respond with a pinking pinch of his own: “I always said that you put me in mind of a movie star / I never said which one.” The dishy barbs continue on “Marie Claire,” where the pair tiff over past divergences in their relationship (a snotty Brooker: “Maybe you never should have taken that job at the BBC / I always called it a company / You insisted it was a corporation”), and on the Byrds-influenced “Please Don’t Get Married (Without Asking Me),” devilishly equating matrimony with madness. Brooker and Berry have long been contributors in the indie-pop world—he with the English pop band the Foxgloves; she with acts such as Black Tambourine, as well as her founding role with Chickfactor—but neither has recorded anything as eternally inviting as the singles, compilation appearances, and unreleased tracks assembled here on It’s Been a While.  --Stylus

It's Been A While is a collection of singles and obscurities from the Pines, who constitute Pam Berry and Joe Brooker. Pam has the voice of a songbird, as becomes immediately evident on lead track Milk Bar, while some delicate folk style plucking from Joe provides a wistful backing. Alternately sung verses on A Hundred Doors gives a lovely touch to a rather sad song that sounds if it was recorded tucked away in a basement. Forget Me Nots is like some trad folk tune given a Simon & Garfunkel twist, a tinge of echo on the vocals. Chalet again shows how delightful the Pines tunes are, given air to breathe and plenty of space. The bare minimum of music and vocals are used, neither wanting to intrude on the other, its just beautiful. MGM is another lovely winsome duet, another song that sounds beamed in from another more innocent age in the days before amps went up to 11. Please Don't Get Married is slow skiffle, or heart rending bluegrass, pick your new genre. Static drifts through the air, like a beautiful snowflake in the winter sun. Marie Claire is a good example of how their voices can blend together, trading parts of the song, then harmonising rather Belle & Sebastian like. Aurora, a cover of a The Cat's Miaow song, sounds like an elegy to something, who knows what, but its incredibly wistful. Joe takes the lead on Some Slow Afternoon and makes for a blissful Lilac Time sounding tune. Brand New Life, a Young Marble Giants tune, is a wispy lite thing that is more atmosphere than anything, but works really well. Seven Clubs finds them doing the trad folk thing beautifully again while High Street is a maudlin, harmonica soaked little thing. I See Stars sets Pam's warbling voice against some gorgeous picking, you can imagine this being sung on a harbour wall in the Mediterranean. A delightful collection.  --Russell’s Reviews

The Pines, they being American singer Pam Berry (a veteran of the US indie scene) and English guitarist Joe Brooker (of The Foxgloves), make some of the most delicate twee-folk you’ll find. Their music, though, transcends lo-fidelity, as certainly there is a perfectionism in the instrumentation, as well as a hymnal quality to their sound that would better suited to stone-built church-halls than dingy basement bars. The breathiness of the vocal harmony suggests that their inspiration comes not only from the 60s folk scene but also the madrigals of the 16th century. The Pines have a kind of Beat Happening! ethic but their music is made crystalline, with a haunted echo, and is far from ramshackle. If anything, it rolls in off a cloud. The dryness and ingenuity of their lyrics, such as “I said you reminded me of a movie star/I never said which one” is playful stood alone, but combined with such crafted instrumentation, makes the side-stepping of expectation utterly captivating. Furthermore, ‘Marie Claire’ remains one of the most brilliantly written, and performed, lyrical two-handers I’ve ever heard.  --Vanity Project

There are those who would slot The Pines into a tweepop slot too, but I’m not one of them. For me, The Pines rise above all attempts to categorise and as a result they produce what is simply sublime and classy music. And that’s sublime and classy in the way of, say, Blossom Dearie, Anita O’Day or the Boswell Sisters. It’s got a lot to do with Pam Berry’s voice of course, which as any self-respecting indie-hipster will tell you is legendary. But it’s also as much to do with the way Joe Brooker’s vocal partners Berry’s, is to do with his exquisitely restrained guitar work and the shared aesthetic that the two of them have. The Pines are the sound of being in love with a time before the spectre of Rock emerged to soil the Pop dream; are a glorious glance back at a 1950s daydream lived through old advertisements and thrift store clothes. The twenty track It’s Been A While set on Matinée collects together some of their finest moments recorded between early 2000 and 2004. Many of these cuts were released on limited edition releases on small but perfectly formed independents, with two, including a perfect cover of a Young Marble Giants gem, being previously unreleased. Essential listening, and no mistake.  --Tangents

The Pines may have released just a handful of EPs and singles over the course of four years, but they apparently left enough of a lasting impression on English indie-rock to warrant a re-release of their material. For those who never heard them during their first go round, It’s Been A While is a twenty-track collection from the duo, who is Joe Brooker and Pam Berry. Although all the songs were written between 2000 and 2004, they sound as if they could have come straight from England in the 1980s, among twee bands like Brighter and Berry’s favorite band, The Orchids. It’s Been A While contains polite, folksy songs, a sound one might expect to hear from a more matured singer-songwriter couple at a family function. A closer look, however, reveals doses of sarcasm and wit, ladeled out in a style similar to The Magnetic Fields. In fact, Berry’s wide, operatic style of singing sounds a bit like The Fields’ Claudia Gonson, and Brooker poses as her Stephin Merritt. In “Mgm,” Berry sings brightly, “Each time we argue I notice your tongue getting sharper.” “Ow,” Brooker answers, and later adds, “I always said that you put me in mind of a movie star/I never said which one.” A delicate, acoustic guitar part finishes his thought, and pieces together the pleasing melody surrounding their play. While The Pines, like all twee, may be an acquired taste, “Marie Claire” is a song that would appeal to a wider crowd. It is, by far, the best song on the album, and suggests that the band could have pushed themselves a bit more to create catchier melodies. It begins with Brooker’s lone voice, which is then lifted up by acoustic and electric guitar. It’s recalls Belle and Sebastian’s style and works very well for The Pines, whose vocals blend the best on this upbeat track. Lyrically, the story is about relationship on the rocks, complete with details of a witchy mother-in-law and unfulfilled plans. “Maybe you should have just taken that job at Marie Claire/just think of what we could have accomplished there,” Berry sings. “We could have made it like our own creation/an education/it really could have been a revelation.” Brooker’s answer to her is simple: “I’ll leave the TV to you/I’ve got this copy editing to do.” Two of the tracks on It’s Been A While were previously unreleased, including “Brand-New-Life,” a cover of the Young Marble Giants song. Here the band has slowed it down and filled it out with reverb and acoustic guitar, and the result is stunning. Berry’s voice is tame and not nearly as lofty as usual, and the result is a darker, more intriguing sound. For anyone who wants to delve into The Pines, this collection has made that desire quite easy to do. Though not revolutionary then or now, the music of The Pines has easily allowed them to make a mark in their own way.  --Urban Pollution

A retrospective of The Pines’ work has been waited for for some time ‘round these parts, and this album in a fine testament to one of the UK’s most underrated acts. The Pines deal in proper nu-folk. None of this beardy shite that seems to be all the rage these days. Nope, The Pines do nice and simple and without looking or sounding like something 1976 dragged up. And so, this is a compilation of a-side, b-sides, stuff that’s hard to get hold of, stuff that’s easy to get hold. And other stuff. Yet it’s this stuff they call stuff that will have The Pines a regular place in my heart. Songs like ‘Chalet’ are so flippin’ affecting that it gets me feeling like I’m a moody teenager again. There’s loads more here that I could go on about, but I won’t. Regular Pines fans can wallow in over an hour of gorgeousness; newcomers can find a band that might not change their lives, but will make their lives a whole lot better.  --Tasty

It's Been a While is the name of this collection from masterful, out-of-the-spotlight pop duo The Pines, Pam Berry and Joe Brooker. And it has been a while…since the Pines' last releases four years ago (the two-volume True Love Waits, perhaps their shining moment), and since the music on this CD was recorded. It spans the first four years of this decade, pulling together songs from all of their releases: 7"s, CD EPs, and compilation appearances, plus two more recently recorded, previously unreleased covers (of The Cat's Miaow and Young Marble Giants). And it's a thoroughly splendid showcase of their skills. Whether playing lazy-day ballads that modernize folk-country traditions or Stephin Merritt-like, Hollywood musical-influenced love ballads, their approach is smart (as erudite as the most cannily crafted novel), stylish (the style being gentle and bright, with an emphasis on tunefulness) and sweet – with moments often surprisingly touching or heartbreaking. Heartbreak and love, dreams and disappointments, confusion and romance (or "Kisses and Fog", as one song title puts it) are set in the context of everyday life, of the practicalities of relationships and the drudgery of work. Opener "Milk Bar" begins "all day I want to dance / while I'm crunching numbers." The devastating "Marie Claire" catalogs work decisions and their impact on a couple. "MGM" uses tribute to a deceased star as a springboard for romantic daydreams. These 20 songs contain a bounty of breakups, hurt feelings, lonely nights, and reconciliations, and a cornucopia of gorgeous moments, of two singers' voices joining each other to perfectly express a feeling. Their music is mostly voices, and the voices conjure up a beautiful feeling of isolation. The lyric "must I pine away in the forest of the night / while all of your are lighting up the town" pins down the band's name as a symbol of that same isolation you can hear in the music, an isolation filled with longing and dreaming. Their music often resembles the sound of two introverts singing wishes from a closed-off room inside the darkened house down the street. Are they there, in the kitchen, creating harmonies for the ages, expressing what we all feel?  --Erasing Clouds

Smart Chickfactor readers surely know the name Pam Berry since she is the cofounding editor of this pop zine, but more importantly she is an angel-voiced legend in the world of indie. Her London-based folk duo The Pines that she plays in with the purple-jumper-sporting Lloyd Cole enthusiast/James Joyce lecturer Joe Brooker has just released a collection of material that it would be very hard to collect in their original format. Available from Cali indie label Matinée, It's Been A While is a joy to hear, so get one already!  --Chickfactor

Pam Berry and Joe Brooker are the American-English duo The Pines. On their new 20-track compilation "It's Been A While", out on Matinée Recordings, they deliver quiet acoustic songs with male/female harmonies. I'm reminded of the late 60s/early 70s female folk singers when I hear the clean vocals of Pam Berry, but I think their music has more in common with bands like The Clientele or some of the less noisy bands in the 80s twee movement. From what I understand, The Pines is only a side-project for Berry and Brooker, and their releases have been several limited edition singles and some compilation tracks for different indie labels. On "It's Been A While", you can hear the highlights from their released material and some unreleased tracks. Joe Brooker is also one half of the English pop-duo The Foxgloves, Pam has been a part of several notable indie bands like The Snowdrops, Black Tambourine and Veronica Lake, - and together they have been The Pines since the beginning of 2000. She has also been guest on recordings by The Clientele, the Lucksmiths and the Jasmine Minks. There are several good songs here, - some really good, but for me 20 tracks is just too much. My favorites on the album are the beautiful "Forget-Me-Nots", "Familiar" and "Fields in Spain".  --Eardrums

Pam Berry’s voice carries these songs along, almost medieval in their basicness and simplicity, occasionally little more than a strum a bar compliments the voice/s as gentle duets form and build like the first love song ever written, the kind of girl you dream of meeting, so hopelessly in love of you with a voice like an angel and a hundred songs all about you without once coming across as obsessive even on the country meets Pick a Part That’s New (though don’t think too much about that comparison) Please Don’t Get Married (Without Asking Me) every detail of the wedding already dreamt up and enough to put a man off yet you can only feel that you would be dragged straight in before she’d even finished the song. The imperfectness of his voice against hers creates an unusual beauty, the imperfectness of relationships, acknowledging that the rough comes with the smooth, looking back regretfully wishing different choices had been made but ultimately realising you wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Occasionally it’s the sound of the Magnetic Fields if synths and drum machines had never been invented or perhaps more accurately The Cat’s Miaow of Library Records fame, certainly twenty tracks worthy of your attention.  --I’d Rather Be Fat Than Be Confused

The Pines are a duo from London, with Pamela Berry and Joe Brooker (The Foxgloves). Pamela Berry moved in England in 1998 for love reasons. She comes from Washington DC and has got a bright indie past; she was the singer of the cult indie band Black Tambourine and founded with a friend the famous indie fanzine Chickfactor – Belle & Sebastian, even wrote a song about this fanzine. She also played with many other indie bands in the US: Belmondo, Bright Coloured Lights, The Castaway Stones, Glo Worm, The Seashell Sea, The Shapiros, The Snowdrops or Veronica Lake, and also helped with some vocals on recordings by The Clientele, Jasmine Minks, The Lucksmiths, The Relict, and The Saturday People. Almost like Rose Melberg or Amelia Fletcher, she could be seen as an icon of the glorious 90’s indie scene. The Pines never released an album so far; only short formats and presences on various compilations between 2000 and 2003, collecting connections with several small indie / twee labels, like Annika, Becalmed, Foxyboy, Gifted, Long Lost Cousin, Matinée, Enchanté, Papercuts and Red Square. With 20 songs and 68 minutes, “It’s been a while” is between a compilation and an anthology of these years. Pamela and Joe are both singing but on most of the songs it’s Pamela, on the other side, most of the guitar parts have been written by Joe. Like all the previous experiences of Pamela it’s collaboration. The biggest treasure here is definitely her voice, quite similar to Kerrie Bolton of Hydroplane and Cat’s Miaow, so there is no surprise there’s a cover of Cat’s Miaow: “Aurora” featured here. There is also another one of Brand-New-Life” by the Young Marble Giants. Strangely these two songs have more layers, and more subtle textures if you compare with the usual simple guitar + vocals approach of the rest of the songs. They are the best tracks of the compilation, the more melodic and addictive tracks. The good thing of it is that they are their most recent recordings. A few nice surprises on this compilation, but like it is always the case with this format, it’s difficult to find a unity. Most of these songs were isolated on small releases, so together, with the effect of repetition; a good part of their charm is probably diluted. Anyway, I would be very curious to discover newer recordings, the similarities with Cat’s Miaow and the connections with The Clientele or The Relict are very promising.  --Derives

“It’s Been a While” es uno de mis discos favoritos que salieron en lo que va del año aunque sea en realidad un compilatorio. Matinée lo puso a la venta el pasado enero y contiene 20 de las mejores canciones de The Pines, el dúo formado por Pam Berry y Joe Brooker. Pam Berry es legendaria, lo sabemos (aunque los Shins quieran arruinar su nombre con su sosa canción) y Brooker es parte de The Foxgloves (a quienes les dedicaré un post pronto, puesto que son excelentes y se lo merecen). La realidad era que muchas de estas canciones que salen en este disco fueron de edición limitadísima, muchas de ellas ya casi imposibles de conseguir, en sellos como Annika (regresa!), Becalmed, Foxyboy, Gifted, Long Lost Cousin, más participaciones en compilatorios varios. Además en este disquito vienen incluídas tres canciones de un CD navideño auto-editado más versiones de Young Marble Giants y The Cat’s Miaow! Elegantes y sublimes, estas canciones a dos voces son el sueño de cualquier popero, son gloriosas, joyitas pequeñitas en clave folky. Y sin dudas ese cover de Brand-New-Life de los YMG es quizá el punto más alto de este disquito. Termendo! Pop cristalino, bellísimo, una banda que se merece mucho más reconocimiento, pues como siempre es increíble que lo mejor siempre termina pasando desapercibido. Blogs que celebran discos realmente tontos y este, nada para este. La miel no se hizo para la boca del burro.  --Mira El Pendulo

Nel corso degli anni i Pines sono stati una brezza trasversale alle etichette, lasciando il segno su Annika, Long Lost Cousin, Foxyboy, Red Square e tante altre label che hanno fatto la storia dell'indiepop dell'ultimo decennio, storia di cui Pam Berry e Joe Brooker costituiscono - a vario titolo - un pezzo essenziale. Pamela, omaggiata del titolo di una canzone sull'ultimo Shins, ha fatto nell'ultimo decennio più cose di quante se ne possano elencare qui: cose come fondare Chickfactor (la fanzine preferita di Stuart Murdoch), suonare in una mezza dozzina di band provvisorie, dai Castaway Stones ai Glo-Worm, e collaborare con tutta o quasi l'aristocrazia indiepop: Clientele, Jasmine Minks, Lucksmiths. L'inglese Joe dal canto suo si accontenta di coltivare part-time il suo culto Smithsiano nei Foxgloves, titolari di un bell-EP qualche anno or sono. Insieme, i Pines mancavano dal 2004, rafforzando l'immagine di popstars sfuggenti e distratte (per dirne un paio, la più diffusa delle loro poche foto ufficiali li ritrae senza testa, e Brooker è solito farsi intervistare sotto pseudonimo), e di un gruppo attento nel valutare il tempo delle sue uscite sino all improcrastinabilità, tanto che ogni loro canzone appare come un'opera d'arte compiuta e piena, colta e attenta. Suppongo sia per questo che non pubblicano album, per non dover accelerare i ritmi impossibilmente lenti delle loro produzioni e per non sporcarle con un'esigenza frivola come un prodotto discografico."It's been a while" raccoglie singoli, canzoni sparse su compilation e svariati altri nuggets registrati tra il 2000 e il 2003, con l'aggiunta di due cover inedite. Ed offre la conferma di un gruppo lontano dallo spotlight anche nel (ri)proporre le sue cose, piccoli gioielli di understatement troppo eruditi per l'ascoltatore pop e troppo timidi per tutti gli altri. Quella dei Pines (dal verbo to pine, struggersi) è una strana forma di sofisticazione pop, un'aristocrazia british volutamente scarna, che intende parlare direttamente al/del cuore senza rinunciare all'ironia pungente che gli è propria. Del tipo che per illustrare le dinamiche di un rapporto in crisi di passione esordisce con la frase "I never thought we'd wonder upon a slow train". La lunghezza dei brani, variabile da un minuto e mezzo ad oltre quattro, evidenzia l'insofferenza del duo a prestarsi a regole di riconoscimento, pur essendo chiamato ad abdicare alla quintessenzialità del loro twee camuffato. Il loro indiepop denso di citazioni letterarie e spunti ironici esclude senza irriderli i presupposti di naivetè del genere per ribaltarli sul piano musicale, dove la chitarra di Brooker sostiene spesso l'intero peso del brano seguendo le tracce del Johnny Marr di "Back to the old house". Pam ha una voce grandiosa, che tende alla brillantezza del soprano senza possederne l'estensione. Resta sovente a vibrare sulle note in quello che è probabilmente il segno più caratteristico del suono Pines for dummies. Fa così "Milk Bar", con Pamela atteggiata a musa gracile ad aumentare quel senso di vuoto e nostalgia del quale sono fatte le canzoni dei Pines, persino in quelle che partite per essere essere nenie natalizie ("Chalet") diventano dolenti esercizi nostalgici. D'altra parte la loro musica si presta tanto al minimalismo wave degli Young Marble Giants quanto all'introversione (o era estroversione?) twee dei Cat's Miaow, entrambi coverizzati negli unici due pezzi nuovi dell'album. Ma esiste anche un lato dei Pines semplice e diretto, per quanto esibito con compìto distacco e circondato da lievi tocchi acustici. Un pezzo come "Rainy Day" in mano ad altri sarebbe stato agghindato sino a scoppiare, e invece rimane a tremare come un pulcino spiumato tra le amorevoli cure di Pam e Joe. E "Marie Claire" è un piccolo capolavoro di equilibrismo armonico, il pezzo più emotivamente carico dell'album e il punto più alto della produzione Pines, raggiunto ai tempi del doppio EP “True Love Waits”. E' una specie di malinconica commedia sulla crisi coniugale, in cui una coppia si rinfaccia a vicenda una interminabile serie di impegni lavorativi privi di senso, per evitare di prendere atto della fine della passione: "maybe I never should have taken that job at Marie Claire/although it did do wonders for my hair" dice lei, "I'll leave the TV to you/I’ve got this copy editing to do" replica lui, chiudendo amaramente la questione fuori dalla camera da letto. E' questo sguardo ironico e aspro sulle cose private a separare i Pines dai cantori pop di mezzo mondo, eppure sfogliando i 20 brani della raccolta come petali di una margherita si incontrano filastrocche folk, classico cantautorato acustico, persino il piccolo affresco malinconico e cinematico anni 50 di "I See Stars". Perché un'altra cosa che hanno i Pines è il senso della tradizione, espresso in forma non esasperata e discreta, un pesante heritage portato all'estrema semplificazione acustica, in parte per scelta e in parte per necessità. La nebbia che avvolge la bellezza di "Kisses and Fog" in strette spire di chitarra nasconde un delicatissimo omaggio a Nick Drake gravato da un pesante e quasi doloroso senso di nostalgia. Enigmatica e sfuggente, inespressa eppure fortissima nel suo cogliere in un attimo lo smarrimento di una vita, è solo uno dei tanti ingredienti che rendono speciale la teoria dei Pines. E' una (nostra) fortuna che siano approdati all'indiepop questi due chanteur d'altri tempi, sintonizzati sulla medesima onda temporale di Mrs Griffin e dei suoi Would-Be-Goods. Ma se Jessica a volte appare così lontana da essere irraggiungibile nella sua villa con giardino, i Pines rimangono dei benevoli vicini di casa. Di quelli che ti invitano a un concerto in giardino la domenica pomeriggio e suonano all'ora del tè L'ironia è che dopo l'ascolto di "It's Been a While" e la lunga razione di trame sottovoce dei due timidi, chi è convinto che l'indiepop non sia altro che un vicolo cieco se ne convincerà a maggior ragione. Senza più accorgersi di quanto sia in errore.  --Indiepop.it