The long running Los Angeles outfit The Hollow Trees describes their music as high energy Americana with funny songs, and I have to admit, a song title like \u201cWhat Do You Want On Your Taco?\u201d got a chuckle out of me.<\/p>\n
But there’s more to their story than acoustic guitars and humor. In fact, you might think of them more as a folk, blues, and jazz hybrid. On this fourth album, they use all those ideas with banjos, ukuleles, mandolins, accordions, and a kazoo, among others, to create a record that looks as fun as the cover art.<\/p>\n
The fun is instant, too, with the aforementioned Taco tune which sounds like it could have been on the soundtrack to Three Amigos <\/i>with its dusty shuffling, clever wordplay, and a sing-a-long chorus. The Hollow Trees utilizes this strategy well on similar tunes like \u201cMerry Go Round,\u201d and the ukulele friendly \u201cMy Dog Has Fleas.\u201d They also use a call-and-response strategy to make the memorable album highlight \u201cThe Whole Thing\u201d. <\/p>\n
The jazz influence is most prevalent on \u201cI Can’t Dance (I’ve Got Ants In My Pants),\u201d where female backing vocals punctuate the good time and an accordion solo fits right in. Some rap influence occurs on \u201cBackward Bill,\u201d which is based on a poem by Shel Silverstein. Elsewhere, the eclecticism shines with the bluegrass, mountain-esque sounds of the traditional \u201cShe’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain\u201d and the soothing lullaby \u201cThe Harmony Hills,\u201d which finishes the album.<\/p>\n
An album for the entire family, it’s a knee slappin’, toe tappin’, ear to ear grinnin’ listen that captures the spirit of youth but will also appeal to parents and octogenarians, too. As long as you possess the ability to laugh, dance, and sing, expect to do all of these things with an elevated mood while going back for seconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":33522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10201],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-45343","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-hollow-trees","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45343"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}