Norine Braun calls on Mother Nature to rise up and fight back in the cinematic video for her environmental ode Songs For Trees — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
The title track and last single from the Vancouver singer-songwriter’s recent concept album, Songs For Trees bops along the line between folk, funk and rock as Braun sits in the forest, gazing skyward in appreciation:
“Looking up through the green
Shafts of sunlight break through …
You offer a bridge, a connection with all that you do.
Songs for trees
, life-giving reacher saves us
Songs for trees, these sterling teachers save us
Songs for trees
, we cannot make it alone.”
“We have known about climate change for over 60 years now yet most of us have missed or ignored the warnings,” Braun says. “Time is running out to turn the tide and the trees are our saving grace. Trees are a vital tool in the slowing down of climate change, as they have the ability to capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it for generations and they release oxygen into the air we breathe.”
The grand finale of videos for the album, the Songs For Trees clip was directed and edited by David C. Jones, who found inspiration in classic chiller-thriller horror shows and disaster movies with the help of directors of photography Zach Houston and Kevin Navia.
“We all grew up watching films about the end of the world and disasters, and often the biggest obstacle to finding solutions were rich business men and politicians who ignore warnings and put us all at risk,” Jones says. “Norine’s passionate song to the power of trees with its changing moods highlighted for me that frustration. I deliberately used odd cuts and shaky camera’s to create a mood of unease — the same anxiety all of us feel about the environment. Connecting with her past, and with the nature around her, she summons up an inner Earth Mother who strikes back. The movie has a bittersweet ending because she’s only able to make change to the television world, not the real world. That is up to us.”
Braun’s 13th album, Songs For Trees was produced by Adam Popowitz, who also played lead guitar and bass alongside Elliot Polsky on drums and percussion, Alice Fraser on keyboards, and Huggybear Leonard on blues harp, harmonica, ocarina and penny whistle, with Braun supplying rhythm guitar in addition to lead vocals.
Emotional, heartfelt and eclectic, Braun is an award-winning artist (Western Canadian Music Award nominee, Banff Centre Musician in Residence, Los Angeles Independent Music Awards, SIBL International Songwriting Competition). Her music is described as “delicious alt-rock with bluesy country hues.” Braun released her 12th album December Falls for Christmas 2020.
Watch the video for Songs For Trees above, check out the album below, hear more from Norine Braun at Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Apple, Amazon and YouTube, and keep up with her at her website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
