Above The Prairie (Digital)

Above The Prairie is the fourth full-length album from Minneapolis-based, The Pines. Release date: February 5, 2016. The Midwest is to The Pines what Monument Valley was to filmmaker John Ford. The flat, endless expanses of the band's native Iowa are at once the settings of, characters in, and muse behind the songs on their new album, Above The Prairie. Songwriters David Huckfelt and Benson Ramsey—who along with Benson's brother Alex form the band's touring trio format—craft their music with a filmmaker's keen eye for detail and framing, blending celestial, ethereal atmospherics with rich, warm vocals and earthy acoustic instruments. It's a gripping brew that demands your total presence, transporting you into vividly painted musical and lyrical snapshots. "Almost all of the songs on the album are somewhere between the first and third take," says Huckfelt. "It was a matter of capturing raw performances and preserving that spirit, of not losing the energy of the songs in the recording o