One Little Plane aka Kathryn Bint releases her second album ‘Into The Trees’ on the 7th of May 2012 on Kieran Hebden’s TextRecords. Listen to the delectable album track ‘She Was Out In The Water’ here:
Kathryn Bint follows her perfectly formed debut Until(2008) with an album that reveals her remarkable range as a musicianand songwriter. Her tender vocals still send husky shivers down thespine, but Into The Trees is so much more than beautiful folksongs.
Thisis an optimistic record in which “hope stretches out like a leaf”.Recorded in 2010 at Bryn Derwen studios in North Wales, while Bint waspregnant with her first child, these songs are imbued with a tangibledetermination and hope. As she sings on ‘Simmer Down Simmer’: “We’llride until we fall and then get back up”.
Bintwas born in Australia, grew up in Chicago, and moved to London nine years ago, where she began writing songs in earnest. After the releaseof Until, she got together with Henry Scowcroft and LucyJamieson, with whom she toured Europe and played festival dates.
Produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet),Into The Trees weaves a fabric of different sounds, united byBint’s elegiac voice and strong storytelling. Radiohead’s ColinGreenwoodlends the album his bass powers, and tracks like ‘Paper Planes’ and ‘IKnow’ rock with a swagger that surprises and yet fits perfectly withthe whole. The musicianship of Scowcroft and Jamieson is on fulldisplay as the record moves deftly from the acoustic warmth of ‘HoldYou Down’ to the sunshine pop of ‘Simmer Down Simmer’ to the dreamysynth of final track ‘Synthesizer’. Hebden’s touch is a delicate one;there is a modesty and clarity to these songs that speaks to theconfidence and judgment of those involved. ‘If You Ask’ is so simpleand clean that no extra seasoning is required.
Hebden’s influence is most apparenton ‘Bloom’—a spare, electronic piece with the precision of his FourTetwork—and yet this track is the heart of the album, encapsulating itscentral themes of people among nature. Lovers intertwine like vines,asleep beneath a canopy of trees, holding hands in leaves of grass.These songs are Whitman-esque odes to man’s place in the natural world;they remind us to stop and listen, to live in the moment. As we hear onthe album opener ‘She Was Out In The Water’: “Honey, I don’t believe inmajesty or things that you compare, I just want to be here now tastingthe salty sea air.”
