Mistina Hanscomb Photo
Klein.
“Shapes of the Things to Come,” from The Quiver — the new album from In These Trees (a.k.a. New Haven-based musician Binnie Klein) and Australian musician Tartie — begins with a searching guitar, heading somewhere, building atmosphere as it goes.
Bass tones ground it, setting Tartie’s direct, emotive voice free. “Life’s not a road, it’s an alley / We try to fit inside,” Tartie sings. “Every day we set the ground / Stretched end to end / But we can bend / Move with me / Through the new shapes / Of the things to come.” The words are by Klein; the music by Tartie, and The Quiver is the result of years of work, 10,000 miles apart.
Lexi Zhou Photo
Tartie.
The long-distance collaboration may sound like a pandemic shutdown project, but it’s not. (Read a previous Independent article from 2021 about it.) Klein is a DJ on WPKN, and she received an email from Tartie before the pandemic asking if Klein would play her music on air. Klein loved Tartie’s songs; “she should be more famous,” she recalled thinking at the time. They began corresponding. In time, Klein mentioned that she had been working on songs of her own and had lyrics without music attached to them.
“Send them,” Tartie said.
Tartie wrote music that Klein loved. Klein contacted a producer, David Baron, to help put the song together. They began strategizing about how they might get their music out into the world. Then the pandemic began. Tartie was already very remote, so together she, Klein, and Baron — along with musician Alex Waterman — finished the track. They found an animator, Anikmhamud, to make a video.
And they began working on a couple more songs. But the idea of making a full-length album was “absolutely not” on the radar, Klein said. At the time, “I couldn’t believe that a single cut was being released,” even though “I had some more songs. They were rolling out at an amazing rate.”
The team of Klein, Tartie, and Baron started working on three more songs — “Quiver,” “Sky, Ocean,” and “Dilemma” — that Klein had written both words and music to. “David suggested I come up to the studio,” Klein said, which was Sun Mountain Studios near Woodstock, N.Y. Baron invited guitarist John Andrews and drummer Aaron Johnston to join them.
“For the acoustic guitar and some electric, I’m sitting in the room and John is playing,” Klein said. “We would listen, and I would give feedback. They were so respectful of me as a newbie,” but she also found that “I did have reactions, because I have a musical sensibility.”
Klein and Baron agreed that the songs could use even more. Baron played keys; Ben Zwerin ended up playing bass, Renee Hikari additional percussion, and Jeff Pevar additional guitars after Klein decided a song needed “a crazy, wild thing.” She knew of Pevar. “Let’s call him,” Baron said, and Pevar recorded his parts remotely. The songs came together as satisfyingly as the first one had. Klein felt great about it. “These particular musicians were extremely nice people, and they really liked the songs,” she said.
As she was leaving the studio to return home, “David said, ‘you know, you should think about doing an album,’ ” Klein recalled. Baron credited Klein and Tartie with being “very prolific,” and he saw a “great narrative” in the backstory of “how we came together, being 10,000 miles apart.” They had four songs already; if they could put together six more, they’d have a full-length record.
Klein met with Tartie on Zoom to discuss the idea, and “we started to realize we had songs.” Tartie had written a few that would be a good fit for the project, and Klein had more material as well. “We got out the whiteboard,” Klein said, and reached 10 songs easily. Besides “Orchard,” the list would include three Klein songs, three Tartie songs, and three that were collaborations.
But in a deeper sense, Klein said, “they are all collaborations.”
Take “Ablaze,” which Tartie wrote a couple years ago about the wildfires in Australia. “A lot of grassroots musicians were doing what they called ‘fire songs,’” Klein said, and both Klein and Tartie wrote songs about the environment. “I said, ‘play it for me,’” Klein said. “She plays ‘Ablaze’ and I nearly fell off my chair.” She had Tartie make a demo and sent it to Baron.
“I’m kind of like a co-arranger,” Klein said. “I had some particular things in mind to make it a professional release.” Klein and Baron settled on getting a viola player — Olivier Manchon — to flesh the song out. Tartie laid down vocals. Baron played keys. But Klein also “had it in mind that someone could sing like the earth was wailing.”
She thought of the Native American vocal group Ulali. Baron knew that Jennifer Kreisberg, one of the group’s members, lived in Connecticut. He sent “Ablaze” to her. Kriesberg said that she normally didn’t record pop music, but the song moved her to participate. She and Klein met at Silk City Music Factory, a studio in Manchester. “She was already behind the glass, wailing,” Klein said. “We were just about in tears.” She ended up contributing vocals to another song, “Hailstorm,” as well.
Or take “Meet Me on the Mountaintop,” written by Tartie, “our most country song,” Klein said. “I had some ideas about bringing Jeff Pevar in to go nuts” on guitar, mandolin, or pedal steel. “Tartie wasn’t sure about the countrification,” but, Klein said, it has turned out to be an early favorite among listeners. Perhaps because its backstory shines through; it’s about a moment in Tartie’s life in which her husband was bicycling to the top of a mountain, and she drove a couple hours to meet him to tell him she was pregnant. “I wanted there to be this exultant feeling at the end,” Klein said.
That The Quiver is the result of a meeting of minds and talents is clear in the multitude of ideas coursing through it. But the artistic chemistry between the two women is obvious, too. Without the liner notes, it would be impossible to say who did what, whose idea a certain element was. They flow together seamlessly, making the resulting album a lush adventure, full of vivid imagery, piercing melodies, shifting musical textures, and deep feelings.
All told, the album took two years to make, even if “it’s been in the works a lot longer,” Klein said. Tartie and Klein, who are decades apart in age, still haven’t met in person, but the connection remains as strong as ever. “The songs that she did are very meaningful to me,” said Klein of collaborating with Tartie. “It’s like my lyrics went off and fell in love.”
Getting the word out is a unique challenge, as touring is impossible. “The indie world is a jungle and the music industry is so strange right now,” Klein said. But “remarkable, magical things keep happening,” and “I just want to be able to keep doing it.”
The Quiver is available on Bandcamp.
Mr. Slattery, thank you for the wonderful review of the debut album "The Quiver" by In These Trees and Tartie. I had to say it. All my best, and thank you New Haven Independent!