- Catalogue Number: ACAT008
- Released: 15 August 2005
- Running Time: 19 minutes
- Format: CD
Track listing:
- Early As The Trees - see the Video
- Rooster
- Jasper's Jump
- Alone, Askew
- Dental Records
- Writers Block
- Eclipse Song
Listen to full tracks @ Myspace.
Purchase Early as the Trees @ Amazon UK
To download mp3 clips: Clicking the link should play the audio clip automagically in your web browser - if not: Right click the link & select 'Save Target/Link As...', for Mac users hold down the Control button, click, then select 'Save As...', & open in your favorite mp3 player (Windows Media, QuickTime, Winamp, iTunes etc).
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- Andy Gill, The Independent - 5th August 2005
- It's not just the way his presence is announced through a series of mini-albums (the seven-track Early as the Trees is his third, after two volumes of At Home with Aidan Smith) that has secured this songwriter comparisons with his fellow Mancunian Badly Drawn Boy. There are undeniable similarities in his ramshackle musical style, incorporating playful piano and organ figures, rippling mandolin, rattling typewriter noises, the whine of a dentist's drill and the occasional comical twang of Jew's harp alongside Smith's guitar-picking; and in the whimsical lyrical conceits on tracks such as "Alone, Askew" and "Rooster", where a faltering relationship is sketched in observations such as "I feel cold, alone, when I reach your answerphone" and "Your Sunday-morning face is beyond the human race". Elsewhere, the lo-fi charm of the title track finds him pondering a life that might have been: "I could have shopped at Tiffany's/ Known epiphanies/ Woken early as the trees/ I could have lived on diamond rings/ Bought the finer things/ Had a voice that really sings". Smith's self-deprecation is rooted in the way he tests the upper limit of his register as he sings about things such as the "jaded sky" of winter ("Eclipse Song"), solitude ("Alone, Askew"), and "Writers Block". It's not hard to imagine him becoming a household-name eccentric.
- Sonny Tremaine, Flux - August 2005
- Aidan Smith finally returns from the Manchester clouds to the pop scene with a 7-track sampler that illuminates his staggering talent. Now firmly entrenched with a new label, Smith's material shines out from his previous demos as if he were the northern Harry Nilsson to the Earlies' Pink Floyd. 'Early As The Trees' is a bouncy, looping, pop art pop song that references Breakfast at Tiffany's to Noel Gallagher; all listed out as regrets and could have beens. 'Jasper's Jump' and 'Alone, Askew' are genuinely beautiful and astonishing, morphing into prime Simon and Garfunkel tracks. Watch this boy make the leap from indie to icon in '05.
- Tim Chester, NME - 6th August 2005
- Wistful strumming and vaudeville piano-plinking from a man who sounds like he's surrounded by flute-playing pixies on springs. If Badly Drawn Boy swapped his beanie for a thinking cap he might have achieved this skewed brilliance.
- Rob Hughes, Uncut - September 2005
- Initially touted as the most promising Twisted Nerve find since Damon Gough, Smith is finally on the cusp of debut proper Fancy Barrel. In the meantime, this third mini-album follows up 2003's two At Home With... efforts. In an overcrowded field of lo-fi aesthetes and bedroom diarists, Smith's childlike songs of innocence and inexperience remain beguiling, if slight. A one-man band of Delia Derbyshire library rhythms, found sounds, sparrow chirps and bucolic skiffle, he's an unlikely collision of Deryck Guyler, The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and The Beta Band. So much for the fondant fancies; now its time for something more substantial.
- John Robinson, Q Magazine - September 2005
- The fate of the nice guy is traditionally not an auspicious one. Hopefully things will turn out differently for Aidan Smith. Like Brighton's The Tenderfoot, he's among the new breed of songwriters who take pride in being eclectic and, at times, also being extremely self-deprecating. The keyword is charm, and Smith has it in spades. Fans of Badly Drawn Boy will immediately get the picture - as does the man himself, who's a fan - and while there have been nods at novelty in the past, this third mini-album sees a genuine, mildly folky talent emerging beautifully.