Welcome to a feature where we sit down and talk to bands and artists about their latest albums to find out all about it. Today we speak to the band And Also The Trees to find out about the album The Devil’s Door.

Hello nice to meet you, tell us about yourself!

SHJ – Hello, my name is Simon Huw Jones I am the singer in the alternative rock/post-punk band called ‘and also the trees’ – I formed the band with my brother Justin who plays guitar and composes all our music, back in 1979. We were very young then – Justin was 15 and I was 19. We were self taught punks and very raw but Robert Smith from the band The Cure, liked our demo tape and this started a long relationship with them. He and their drummer Lol Tolhurst produced and directed our early recordings and we toured with The Cure in 1981 and 84.

We’ve also been invited to be their special guests in the summer for three nights at the Roman arena in Nimes in the south of France. I mention the Cure, not because we sound like them, but because it’s a kind of link. that will be familiar to most people. Since the 80’s we have been playing live in Europe and as far afield as the USA and Japan as a headline band and we’ve just released our 15th (i think) studio album.

Tell us about the new album

SHJ – It’s called ‘The devils door’ and is the last of a trilogy of albums following ’The Bone Carver’ and ‘Mother-of-pearl moon’ – the albums are grouped together mainly because they feature the clarinet and piano of Colin Osanne our multi instrumentalist. And because we wrote them in a relatively short space of time… so they have a similar feel. 

Favourite track in new album and why?

SHJ – I think it’s the one called ’Return of the reapers’. Justin gave the pieces of music working titles which he’d taken from paintings he’d recently seen in the galleries and museums of London. Sometimes these titles are a distraction for me as the lyric writer but on other occasions they’re useful… like with this song. So with ‘Return of the reapers’ I just played the music and sang what came into my head when I imagined the painting and it came very easily. Some songs, most actually, don’t come anywhere as easily as that, but when it happens it’s like a gift.

Tell us a bit about the recording process, was it fun to do?

SHJ – I live in Geneva, Switzerland, and to make things easier we record our parts separately. Paul Hill and Grant Gordon recorded the drums and bass together in a converted barn in Herefordshire, Justin and Colin recorded the guitar, clarinets and piano in London and I record my vocals first in Muswell hill in London then I recorded them again in Malvern. Justin was present at all the recording sessions directing and he was with me in London and  Malvern to record me.

There were great , autumnal, panoramic views from the Malvern Hills of Worcestershire and the Midlands which is where we’re from and it felt very good to be there together working on these new creations. I hadn’t been ‘home’ for a long time.

What inspired the album name?

SHJ –  The last words of the chorus to our single ‘The silver key’ are –  ‘I’ll wait for you at the devils door’ – it’s a strong line and image and can be perceived in different ways, which we liked. 

Tell us the idea behind the album cover?

SHJ – It’s a photograph I took in Sweden when I was there some years ago. Justin designed the cover as he usually does and often he uses my photographs. For us the process of choosing the right image or picture for the cover is when a title is put on an image and then – you just know, or we do in this case, if it’s right or not… if it works. The back of the album is a picture of a door and of course this would work in a predictable way – but we’re not looking for that. we’re looking for something that works in another, almost inexplicable way. 

What one of your songs on the new album do you think will the most difficult to rehearse for a live audience?

SHJ – We’ve already chosen 6 songs from the album that we think will be possible to play well live. The last track on the album called ’Shared Fate’ would have been very difficult to play live as it was recorded by our drummer Paul Hill  using a timpani drum – and even if we had one of our own it would have been too big to take on the road and play live.

Why should people listen to the album?

SHJ. – Because they might discover something they like or something that interests them. We’re an underground band but we have a following, small though it may be, that has spread across the world.  

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