The New Root

Always liked Kate Bush but felt she should've been just a teensy bit more barking? Here's a little triple-track treat for you. Trish Boothby's vocal gymnastics tousle heath-like over husband David's melodramatic, tempi-shifting instrumentation, with a eminently capable rhythm section in hot pursuit. It's ambitious stuff, revealing more with each listen - title track 'Dream Exile' sees David's guitar shifting from distorted rock riffery through eerie plectrum slides to nimble jazzy bounce as Trish extemporises away with a wanton operatic passion about evil hearts, missed chances and the like. The gentler, late-night piano ballad 'Crazy' takes things down a notch (slow-driving bassline and sci-fi-mystic whammy bar guitar wailing away) before acoustic confessional 'Breathe Slow' brings us close to normality again - a breathy, tender meld of soaring, volatile voice and fret-vaulting guitarwork. Engagingly unique.'

Mike White - Venue Magazine Issue 853, 30th Jan 2009 - Venue Magazine

'Husband and wife team Trish and David Boothby are the backbone of The New Root, purveyors of an extraordinary sound we can only describe as a sort of power pop/goth/rock opera hybrid that crashes ever forwards like it's on its way to save the last polar bear from a fragment of iceberg. If it's an outward expression of their marriage, you only hope they've got a good councellor (or live apart).

Trish has an Elizabeth Fraser-ish way of making the simplest words and phrases sound utterly incomprehensible - in a good, babbling-in-one's-sleep way. Her shrill banshee voice floats and cartwheels over the highly charged devil's music of David's squealing guitar and a walloping rhythm section of Joel Mines (drums) and Tony Silcock (bass and synths).

'Sick Of Me' sounds like a Depeche Mode/Tori Amos wrestling match. The most exhilarating thing we've heard all week.'

Anna Britten - Venue Magazine Issue 810, 27th March 2008 - Venue Magazine