Please The Trees

It occasionally occurs to me that rock journalists should let bands claim in interviews that their latest LP is the best thing they've ever done – and then on no account use that particular quote, which is a yawnsome cliché down there with “we just make music for ourselves and if anybody else likes it, that's a bonus.” But then again, sometimes a group’s new release IS their best yet.

A case in point is A Forest Affair, the third long-player from the Czech four-piece Please the Trees. The album is being launched at a concert on Wednesday, Oct. 10 at Prague's intimate Malostranská Beseda that is likely to be packed to the rafters.

The band’s previous efforts Lion Prayer (2007) and Inlkalesh (2010) certainly had their moments, but to these ears at least they were occasionally a little heavy on bombast (hear early single Red Sky on the radio and you could mistake it for Arcade Fire) and a tad light on variety. A Forest Affair is a step forward. It’s more diverse stylistically, the songwriting is superior, and – above all – it sounds great.

Please the Trees’ leader Václav Havelka is justifiably proud of the LP, which is coming out on the hip local indie imprint Starcastic. “Not to bitch about the old records, or that I don’t stand by them, but they were just part of the process,” says the bearded, long-haired singer-songwriter. “I feel like with the new album I can really present it as, this is what I do.”

Originally from the forests of the Krkonoše Mountains, Havelka has for some years been one of the most active figures on Prague’s independent music scene. Alongside performing solo and with a full group line-up, he has hosted his own “Natural Bridge” show on alternative station Radio Wave, and – as part of the promotion company Scrapesound – brought leading international alternative rock and country artists, such as Mudhoney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, to the city. I also write score music for theater plays. Did it for Srpen v zemi indianu and Dogville at Stavovske divadlo, Idiot at Dejvicke divadlo and Hodinova hra at Divadlo na zabradli.

Please the Trees came together in the mid 2000s when Havelka, then working solo and DIY-style under the name Selfbrush, hooked up with Some Other Place, a purely instrumental group from the south Bohemian town of Tábor. The original lineup remained intact until a member of the Tábor camp, guitarist Zdenek Kadlec, exited the group after the recording of A Forest Affair at the tail end of last year.

“The whole process cost me somebody who is very dear to me. He and I practically started the band together,” says Havelka, with sadness and a little frustration in his voice. Kadlec quit over Havelka’s decision to record in the United States with a producer whose input involved rather more than pressing record. “Zdenek felt the total opposite to me. He felt the demo we recorded here in the Czech Republic was what we should play. He thought we weren’t playing our own music.”

The producer in question was Jonathan Burnside, who has worked with a list of acts as long as your arm, including Nirvana, Faith No More, Melvins, and Red House Painters. He also helmed records by Czech bands such as Tatabojs and Slut during a stint in Prague in the 1990s. However, Havelka didn’t meet Burnside until two years ago, when the American, on a short visit to the city, was introduced to him by his Scrape sound pal Ondrej Šturma at his solo performance at an exhibition opening and the pair hit it off.

“I just felt recording with him, in his environment in California, was really something we had to try. My aesthetic will always be DIY, but I just thought, sonically, I really want to work with somebody I respect and who can bring an extra dimension to the music,” says Havelka of the producer, who suggested fresh approaches to some songs and added guitar parts on others. “He just gave the record character.”

Burnside also gave A Forest Affair an expansive and often warm sound on tracks that range from the driving, Crazy Horse-style guitar maelstrom of Hell on Earth and the heavy, drone rock of Sleep to the lovely She Made Love to the Moon, with its Bad Seeds-esque organ, and the country-tinged guitar pop of the catchy Nobody No One.

Recording in America put a hole in the coffers of Please the Trees, who offset the cost somewhat with a few dates in California (a previous U.S. tour had taken them to the world renowned South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas). But Havelka says bands like his never make any money anyway. “You just have to walk your own path.”

The 34-year-old, whose take on the backwoods hipster look recently earned him a place in the website fashionbook.cz’s list of the 50 best dressed Praguers, sees his band’s music in an international context (which is one reason he sings in English). He hopes to tour more beyond the Czech Republic’s borders – and to win the respect of the like-minded musicians from other countries. - Prague Post

Story by Ken Richardson
But the best of this batch was the Czech Republic’s Please The Trees, a brooding quartet that could have come from Czecho-Wilco, considering its American-roots appearance and bizarre blend of musical influences. One minute, it was doing some lovely Johnny Cash country, complete with train rhythm on brushed drums, and then it launched into huge, strummed, progressive chords, and then into … what’s that? I have no idea! Except, maybe, it was an amalgam of all the foreign records or radio the band was able to hear in its homeland. And on top of everything, singer/guitarist/feedback-lover Vaclav Havelka mused with a slight yodel in his weathered voice. How odd. How wonderfully rock and roll.
- Sound And Vision Magazine - June 2010

Hailing from the Czech Republic, Please the Trees kicked off the set. Although they traveled from afar, their sound fits in just right in the states. Lead singer, Vac Havelka, has a bit of an Eddie Vedder resonance in his voice, without all the parodied hoots and hollers. Pure and simple folk-rock, but instead of having its roots in the American Frontier, its in the Czech frontier, which is somewhere between the Hapsburgs and the Franz Ferdinand I.
Czech Republic: The Final, Final Frontier. - incontinentalbreakfast.com