And also The Trees second album Virus Meadow, considered by many as their classic album. With this album the band found their own unique style. Restored and remastered for the first time since its release in 1986. The original album comes with the band's first two EPs, including an additional previously unreleased studio recording Shantell.

• Restored and Remastered
• Includes 1985 EP "A Room Lives In Lucy"
• Includes 1987 EP "The Critical Distance"
• Previously unreleased recording of "Shantell"
• Gatefold Cover

Virus Meadow is considered by many to be the classic ‘And Also The Trees’ album. It was recorded in 1986 in Worcestershire, England, not far from the Hamlet where the band were based in an old farmhouse. ‘Virus Meadow’, the title track of the album, is a song inspired by the fields overlooking where a medieval village once stood before being abandoned and left to fall into the ground after being decimated by the bubonic plague.

It was the first time the band took influence from their rural surroundings and where one first hears the distinctive mandolin-like guitar sound, which were the two characteristics that set the band apart from their contemporaries as they created a sound and style of their own.

Restored and remastered for the first time since its release, the original album comes with a second disc featuring the bands first two EP’s and an extra, previously-unreleased, studio re-recording of their single ‘Shantell’.

"For their second full album, the Trees developed an even more arty approach than before, establishing what would become their basic sound for a number of years to come. Stripping down the instrumentation on most of the songs to a dark rhythm drive from Burrows and Havas, Justin Jones here concentrates on a series of electric guitar parts which combine the liquid touches of flange effects and folky runs on the frets, avoiding crunch in favor of delicacy, to create marvelously evocative musical shadings, rich in atmosphere. Along with Simon Jones' sometimes extravagant lyrical images of an older, more rustic and mystic time, with hints of Wordsworth's early Romantic poetry throughout - "The Headless Clay Woman" and "The Dwelling Place" give a hint as the at once nostalgic and dramatic direction - it gives Meadow a unique flavor for Eighties British rock. While some of the Trees' aesthetic may spring from the same creative well as a number of moodier British folk-based artists from earlier days - some of Nick Drake's more metaphoric numbers sprung to mind - the goth-tinged feel of the music makes Meadow all the more distinct. One could easily imagine it soundtracking an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, if not something even older. Some numbers, like "Vincent Craine," have a more conventional rock approach, but this is counterbalanced by the album's highlight, "Gone...Like the Swallows," a richly textured, powerful song featuring all the band members at their best." Ned Raggett, All Music

Track Listing:

A1 Slow Pulse Boy
A2 Maps In Her Wrists & Arms
A3 The Dwelling Place
A4 Vincent Craine
B1 Jack
B2 The Headless Clay Woman
B3 Gone Like The Swallows
B4 Virus Meadow

C1 A Room Lives In Lucy
C2 There Was A Man Of Double Deed
C3 Scarlet Arch
D1 The Critical Distance
D2 Scythe & Spade
D3 The Renegade
D4 Shantell

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