Ten Years Later

It's hard to believe, but Beachwood Sparks' second album, "Once We Were Trees," is 10 years old now. When I realize that albums that seemed so new, obscure and different at the time I first heard them have now reached that age, I feel older. Beachwood Sparks is one of those bands disappointingly lost in the shuffle as one decade turns to the next. They were on Sub Pop, but only had a couple of albums and dissolved quickly; now, their brand of rock -- a combination of the faded sun in country fields and the mesmerizing size of the universe -- isn't popular or influential. Sometimes in Real Estate's songs I hear the same washed warmth in the guitars and an understanding that you can be sleepy-eyed and poignant at the same time, but Beachwood Sparks barely pokes its head through anywhere else.

"Once We Were Trees" is a great record, though. It's loosely Transcendentalist, sprinkling around lyrics about the pleasures of nature and the downside of commerce (e.g. "You take the gold and I'll take the forest / You can take what's bought and sold 'cause I can't take much more of this"), with a zonked-out approach to country. There are slide guitars and banjos, yet the album ends in a series of warped guitars and noise -- paradise lost, perhaps? Overall, it sounds like sitting around a campfire among the stars rather than gazing skyward at them. The band titled its final EP "Make the Cowboy Robots Cry," which I've often thought does the best job I've ever heard of capturing a band's sound in an album title. It suggest something western, something futuristic and something touching, all at the same time, which Beachwood Sparks somehow achieved.

Above is a 2000 video of the band that appears to be from a Spanish radio or television station. The quality is surprisingly high. Speaking of 10 years, I'm heading to my high school's 10-year reunion tonight. Yes! I get to see my friends!