onelinedrawing

visitor

‘There?s something about Onelinedrawing that feels extremely intimate. It is like a good personal friend sharing a song he just wrote with only you, making the title of the first full-length Jade Tree release, ?Visitor,? a misnomer. As Jonah Matranga explains, though, the songs are the visitors and not he nor the listeners.

As quickly as the album starts, a different meaning of the word ?Visitor? is revealed to the listener.  In this slow moving yet beautiful ballad entitled ?Um,? Jonah reveals the heartache of, assumedly, his divorce. He is the visitor, handed a new life where he finds himself ?feeling young and scared.?

No sooner than the fade out of the piano and guitar feedback of the first track, the second song, ?Bitte Ein Kuss? quickly picks up the pace. It has a beat like ?All You Need Is Drums…? by Piebald that just makes you want to dance. This fun and lighthearted song makes a great sex analogy in the line ?It?s time for a bit of in-the-bed disco.?

It may seem like Jonah got over his divorce rather quickly, but keep in mind the fact that these songs were not written and placed in a linear progression. These songs were written over a period of about eight years.

?Visitor? may be planned out more than prior OLD releases, but it is still rather raw and spontaneous in comparison to most albums today.

?Bands are getting too good at cleaning everything up,? said Jonah Matranga. So, OLD takes a demo tape approach to recording songs. Usually, the songs are rather minimalistic, featuring nothing but a guitar and voice but the presence of piano and drums are felt much more throughout the course of this album.

The overall result is a quick flip of the switches from downtrodden ballad, to lighthearted and joyous songs. It?s rather manic depressive in that sense, which is understandable.

In addition to ?Bitte Ein Kuss? which is German for ?A kiss, please,? the best tracks on this album are ?Smile? (which features an interesting solo by R2D2), ?Yr Letter,? “Softbelly,” and ?Why are we fighting??