With trumpet, violin, guitars, piano and a frequently spectacular rhythm section, the St. Louis band creates a gorgeous backdrop for the vocals and songs of Tawaine Noah, who sometimes sounds like a young Michael Stipe or Adam Duritz, sometimes like he's desperate to persuade you otherwise.
On the band's debut session in the KDHX studios, UTR starts out with the gently twanged "Let Me Be," shifts gears for the tense but almost waltzing "Facing Fools," to the haunted R.E.M.-esque "44," a song featured in an ambitious, one-take video, before closing out with "Death," a doomed lover's plea that finds some kind of reconciliation in the band's ultimately hopeful music.
Union Tree Review's first album, "Death, and Other Forms of Relaxation" is due out in the summer of 2011. The band holds a CD release party on July 30 at the Firebird with Bo and the Locomotive, Pretty Little Empire and Oil Boom.
