Stream Taken By Trees' new album at NPR

And then there are those rare moments of synchronicity when everything falls into place. As previously mentioned, it's Taken By Trees week here at One Man in a Small Room, and over the next six days (approximately) I will be breathlessly counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the release of Victoria Bergsman's much-anticipated (at least around these parts) sophomore solo effort, East of Eden (9/8 via Beggar's Group/Rough Trade). Get excited (if only I knew how to say this in Pakistani). Last Friday, I profiled her pleasant but perfunctory, Animal Collective cover (the gender balanced "My Boys"), and yesterday I discussed why I find the tale of this album's making so captivating. Today, NPR has the full album available for your streaming enjoyment.

The past few years have likely been a rather strange and surreal time for Ms. Bergsman. Her voice is known the world over (she was the reverbed female intoning her disregard for people of all ages on Peter Bjorn and John's ubiquitous 2006 single "Young Folks"), and yet she remains obscure. East of Eden is the kind of record that could very well change this.

This album seems completely without precedent. It's arguable that Eden represents something wholly new and different in an ever-expanding and increasingly inclusive independent music genre. If anything, it's a fitting testament to the adventurousness of a musical category ("indie") that has long been more commercial designation than sonic signifier. What would Pavement think?

Eden's charm lies in its "realness" (for lack of a better word - In this post- MTV reality age, is there any more hackneyed adjective?). Technology is so in right now. The interwebs are awash with laptop-fueled electro-pop. Pop music has once again embraced pillowy synths. In this modern age of comping, overdubs and perfect plasticene sounds, to hear a record that sounds so stripped, so bare, so live, so immediate, so human seems a rare thing indeed.

However, this impression is not without its irony. To a great extent, Eden is an album facilitated and even empowered by technology. For example, without modern recording software and the laptop, it's conceivable this record (in light of the unique, specific vision of its principals) could not have been made. However, while Eden was clearly enabled by technological advancements, unlike a great deal of pop music in this trend/"next big thing"-obsessed age, it is hardly defined by them. This album is another powerful example of an artist following her muse and, in the process, stumbling upon a sound, an aesthetic or, at the very least, an ethos delineating a possible, alternate direction in independent music.

As technology tightens its stranglehold upon the collective imagination of the American listening public, it seems entirely possible that stripped sonics and a certain regressiveness (or more specifically an "anti-technological" orientation) will once again become fashionable. Eden's distinct sound seems to suggest such a way forward; a way out of (or back from) this brave, new, glossy world. There will inevitably come a time when all this empowering technology will feel utterly limiting, and old will once again be new, and new will be so yesterday. "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

It's somewhat similar to the rise of garage bands in the wake of the full collapse boy band mania or the post-O Brother Where Art Thou ascendance of bluegrass in a time of nu-metal hegemony. Do you remember the White Stripes recording Elephant on acetate? Crazy, right? Don't they know we have computers for this sort of thing? Perhaps even the sepia-toned compositions, baroque harmonies and technical proficiency of a band like Grizzly Bear are further indications of the resurrection of an almost antiquarian, antediluvian sense of craft (and craftsmanship); a sensibility nearly drowned in the flood of self-expression unloosed in 1977.

For better or worse, this largely artificial, dynamic tension between "real" and "un-real" will always be a part of the popular musical conversation. It's nice to know that simply because this decade is almost over, there are still axiomatic realities upon which one can safely rely.

Stream Taken By Trees' East of Eden here (via NPR).