The Christmas Tree Ship

Fantastic Plastic FPS085
24/11/2008 – Limited CD&DVD / Download

I LIKE TRAINS, in that tiny space that is allowed between epic albums, have paused to compose, perform and record a daringly ambitions EP.

During the autumn and winter of this year a second album will be previewed and battle hardened on a European tour. In the meantime I Like Trains stately progress has generated “The Christmas Tree Ship” on the oddball format that suits the band so well. The EP is special: itís a perfect opportunity to present a single narrative piece that stands alone and has a life independent of either album. It’s instrumental music, with the five sections performed and recorded in one single take. David Martin’s large and other-wordly voice is silent throughout. A video-maker, a young choreographer and a dancer have created a DVD to accompany the release and there will be a limited number of physical copies made.

The tale behind the waves of sound is well known to children in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois. Descendants of immigrants who worked in the forests and on the ships that took timber down Lake Missouri to Chicago, and city dwellers of Chicago all know about Captain Santa (Herman E. Schuenemann) and his proud, but old and infirm sailing rigger (the Rouse Simmons). All were lost in 1912 in a late November storm as they made a dash to the Christmas berths to sell thousands of Christmas trees to the Chicagoans, as they had done for thirty years past. Steamships were taking over by then, and The Christmas Ships made few trips after that year. The World had changed and worse was to come.

The music, like the background story, is unmistakably I LIKE TRAINS. Thematically the five sections flow as a single work, with the harmonic structure of opening track “The Christmas Tree Ship” taken up in the final section “Friday, Everybody Goodbye”. There is an evocation of sacred 20th century orchestral music. There are echoes of European folk tunes and hints of a pre-modern solstice rooted in family prayers and the labour for survival through hard times. Captain Santa’s wife and children continued to work the Christmas trade after his death, using the railroad to move the trees and their handmade decorations until the 1930s.

I LIKE TRAINS have created their own singular world sitting in delightfully dark, cultish contrast to the rest of the music scene. Their musical intentions are far removed from the traditional clichÈs of the medium, yet through their spine tingling anthems they have earned a huge following of dedicated and passionate fans. With the release of their debut album last October through Beggars Banquet, their reputation has extended far and wide, out of Leeds, into Europe and across to America gaining them great critical acclaim.