Think Tree
Like The Idea

The sky of rock has always been crossed by meteors and shooting stars, groups that have released 1 or 2 decidedly well-made albums and then suddenly disintegrated in the atmosphere, leaving a trail of light that often disappeared quickly.

Take Think Tree, for example, a quintet from Boston consisting of keyboardists Krishna Venkatesh and Paul Lanctot, vocalist Peter Moore, drummer Jeff Biegert, and guitarist Will Ragano. Think Tree, in their short career, only released a single ("Hire a Bird," 1989), an EP ("Eight/Thirteen," 1990), an album ("Like The Idea," 1992), and then vanished into nothingness.

I remember noticing this album because I was intrigued by the band's name and liked the CD cover design, a lively baby surrounded by a luminous aura, sitting on the world and holding a bottle bigger than him. The same design is reproduced on the bottle's label, creating a perspective play that tends to infinity. Very psychedelic!

However, I had absolutely no clue about Think Tree; theoretically, they could even be doing cover songs of Claudio Villa, but my instinct kept telling me that a CD with such a cover had to be interesting, so I bought it practically blindly. I must say that, at least on that occasion (at other times, it had pushed me to buy unlistenable trash), my instinct behaved excellently.

"Like The Idea" consists of 12 tracks (plus 8 snippets created with the sampler that do not exceed a minute) which are real collages of world music, funk, folk, industrial, raucous vocals, falsetto choruses à la Frank Zappa, electronic wanderings, and samples galore, all seasoned with a good dose of humor and irony à la They Might Be Giants. The rhythm is powerful and precise, the solos dry and essential, the sound is modern and compact: the album is engaging and has all the ingredients to please.

Moreover, it's dotted with unusual ideas and striking inventions like the interlude of Japanese music and dissonant chimes in "Doh", the western arrangements in Wall Of Voodoo style in "Rattlesnake", the cacophonous snippet, and the noise-laden finale of "Break The Mirror". But almost all the tracks stand out for their originality: "Eye For Eye" is a sort of psychedelic blues with various choruses, "Porcupine Coat" is a wild shembo funk, "The Living Room" is an Arabic-style ballad in pure world music fashion, "Mamther" is a slow and hypnotic chant with oriental scents, "All We Like Sheep?" and "Holy Cow" are 2 industrial-Zappa rides that could have been written by a completely drunk Trent Reznor. Generally, no track can be considered banal, except perhaps for "Everything Is Equal" which is actually a nice funky piece à la Living Colours but whose "normality" clashes a bit with the overall eccentricity of the album.

However, it's not all sunshine and roses; this album does have some flaws. For instance, the tracks are so different from each other that "Like The Idea" feels more like a compilation of pieces from various groups rather than the work of a single band, and the sampled transitions that are supposed to serve as the glue between songs and thus give a sense of continuity to the album actually make it even more fragmented and confusing. And then, how can an almost debut band dare to mimic Frank Zappa, copy Living Colors, parody Nine Inch Nails, and interpret tracks from the eastern tradition without being annoying and ridiculous? The 5 from Boston manage it thanks to their boldness and lucid madness, but above all thanks to their undeniable talent. Talent, not passion, because there is no trace of emotion and spontaneity in their tracks, and their sound is as cold and polished as a Rubik's cube. Those who seek sighs and heartbeats in music are kindly advised to look elsewhere.

"Like The Idea" was strangely little appreciated by critics and the public, and so the following year, Think Tree decided to split and go their separate ways. Perhaps their creative vein was already exhausted, or perhaps the album's lack of success created tensions within the group. However, a few months later, Peter, Jeff, and Will got back together and formed Count Zero, a band that to this day is still alive and kicking and regularly produces interesting albums, but that's another story.

To conclude, "Like The Idea" is surely a cerebral, discontinuous, and pretentious album but I like it a lot and consider it a little masterpiece in its genre. It deserves a rating of 3.5 but since there are no half balls on DeBaser, I'll give it a full 4 balls. Cheers.