Musical group The Pines brings the nostalgic small-town feel of their latest album to the Englert.
By Adam Buhck
Nostalgia can leave one wanting to replicate an experience. The pity is things are never quite the same as in the memory.
Folk/alternative group The Pines explores this with its latest album, Above The Prairie. The Minneapolis-based trio will bring its show to the Englert Theater, 221 E. Washington St., at 7 p.m. this Friday.
The Pines — David Huckfelt, Benson Ramsey, and Alex Ramsey — has been playing music for almost a decade. Memories of life in small-town Iowa are ever-present for the group, seeping into its music, though the band first took shape in a Mexican barrio in Tuscon, Arizona, where Huckfelt and Benson Ramsey lived at the time.
“I grew up in Spencer, Iowa, in Clay County, not far from the Missouri River, the Loess Hills, and Spirit Lake,” Huckfelt said. “What remains for me is the sense of wonder, long hours, and slow days running all over town and on friends’ farms, patience, and watching the seasons change. Those feelings drift into the music.”
Upon relocating to Minneapolis, Ramsey’s brother Alex joined the lineup.
“It’s a matter of extremes and being open to the vastness of things,” Huckfelt said. “The Twin Cities had another slant on the folk and blues music of the Midwest that we loved, but added to the mix were progressive experimental scenes, jazz, hip-hop, rock; it’s a real genre-bending town.”
After generating a buzz around the Twin Cities, the band broke onto the scene in 2007, signing with Red House Records.
Over the years, The Pines built up a fan base with four albums, write-ups in Rolling Stone, and a performance at the 2008 South By Southwest. The group has also shared the stage with such huge acts as Bon Iver and Arcade Fire.
With refined guitars, atmospheric melodies, and ethereal and romanticized vocals delivered by Benson Ramsey., the group’s sound is gothic and mysterious, evoking the image of a quiet night beneath an endless starscape.
Such a scene is featured on the cover of the latest album, Above The Prairie, released on Feb. 6. For the band, Above The Prairie marks a return home and an attempt to capture the past but even more so represents the impossibility of doing so. This leads to another recurring theme on the album, the idea of finding somewhere to make home.
“Your take your home, and you make your home wherever you can find it and with the people you love,” Huckfelt said. “Nothing ‘out there’ is really gonna help you slow down and just be, so you carry your home around with you like a little shelter and try to find some peace in the chaos.”
MUSIC
What: The Pines
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Englert, 221 E. Washington
Admission: $22
