The second album by celebrated North Carolina collective Lost In The Trees entitled A Church That Fits Our Needs, is a work of vaulting ambition, a cathedral built on loss and transformation. In the summer of 2009 writer, composer, and general architect of the group, Ari Picker, lost his mother, an artist in her own right, when she took her own life. Picker set about transforming the events into a musical tribute, composing and writing with his mother’s picture above his desk: the same picture that now graces the album’s cover.

Midtown Dickens began as a ragtag, learn-while-you-play duo of best friends Kym Register and Catherine Edgerton. The project was born in the post-industrial blues town of Durham, NC when the pair began collecting orphaned instruments from generous friends and back alley dumpsters. They developed an unrefined brand of punk-folk that drew from old time bluegrass and the anti-folk minimalism of the Pacific Northwest. Eager to include more friends in the project, the pair rallied a DIT (Do-It-Together) front-porch collective of players who shared instruments such as the banjo, accordion, musical saw, trumpet, trombone, guitar, drums, mandolin, upright bass, harmonica, glockenspiel, spoons, and whatever else was lying around. The band soon solidified into a cohesive quintet, embarking on a darker and more extensive exploration of folk music, while still rooted in the earnest songwriting of Kym and Catherine.