Treetop Yelling. Tall Firs, Out Of It And Into It.

That Brooklyn-based duo Tall Firs – comprised of Dave Mies and Aaron Mullan – look as though birthed from the same progenitors, sing with the same whisky-soaked baritone, tote similar Fenders and play said things through a solitary amp elucidates quite wondrously how they've managed to construct a record that's quite so singular in third and latest full-length, Out Of It And Into It. Within this infinite affinity lie tales of polishing off bottles of whisky, ever-victorious "devils", and the precariousness of life via the action of suicide in an unremittingly wearying yet ultimately worthwhile listen and whilst you may suspect the pair were Out Of It intermittently during the process of its conception, they find themselves in a gloomy, yet gloriously lugubrious swing of things throughout.

Its pace practically motionless; nigh its every rhythm accentuated purely by lethargic strums and segueing sparsity; its lyrical content cathartic, even when raining down from an "all-encompassing cloud of doom" Mies and Mullan provide a murk indubitably worth drenching in: from the spectacularly disconsolate Suicide (introspective guitars chime to lifeless lyrics such as "skeletons can't help but smile") to the snarly Thurston Moore-cum-Joseph Arthur purr of Crooked Smiles, Tall Firs reap a grim morbidity capable of cajoling the living into reassessing the myriad meanings to all sentience. The latter is (albeit a little cryptically) inspired by the lugging of hefty beers and an unflappable optimism that's weightier still toward Butlins, Minehead and indeed, now signed up with Barry and Deborah's newfangled ATP Recordings imprint, it'd appear that this unorthodox brotherhood has found family in the most likely of places. Waiting On A Friend is an unassuming wallow in B major, while Whole Thing Is Over borders on the sort of psych wig-out usually heard rolling down the screes of a certain Black Mountain, eventually blooming into flange-stricken, six stringed yowling. However two minutes of thirty-three at the heart of Out Of It And Into It entitled Vertigo prove most arresting, this 6% of the record so rugged and rustic that you can practically sense the scent of bonfire on knackered checkered flannel. Clambering ever higher amidst the forests in order that they distance themselves further from the mires of monotony below, Out Of It And Into It ought to see Tall Firs yell far and wide from the loftiest treetops and whether or not they've a fear of falling, well, heck; there are "good times" even in death, right?