The Lyndsay Diaries - Tops of the Trees Are On Fire

Here's a review of the Lyndsay Diaries in 5 words or less: Wispy, pretty, sad, woeful, lillypad. Even hough "Lillypad" doesn't fit into the same categories as the other four, it still denotes someone romantic, someone bummed and reflective. I have never pretended to "get" emo, but I understand that it is geared to render its listeners woeful and allow them an area to heal within music. Thus is the Lyndsay Diaries, thus is The Tops of the Trees Are On Fire, where one-man ball of emotions Scott Windsor bares his wounds. It's a fairly morose album, ranging from somber to plaintively sad. Windsor weaves hope in every pause, tangles recollection into every strummy chord he can muster. It's as if he's looking at the world through a particularly rainy window, and it renders him the genius simpatico of his kingdom, allowing him to befriend one of the "pretty" girls in school and know her, then name his band after her. It allows him to lament that he cannot handle "this life" (I've noticed it's often "this life" in the frustrated songwriter world) on "Cowboy", allows him to render the world hopeless in "How We Kill Ourselves" and lament baseball cards, parents' Volvos, and the springtime youth eternal that Windsor, who's the same (young) age as me, seems to have lost. Sometimes a poet laureate, sometimes just plain honest, Scott Windsor's efforts on "Tops of the Trees Are On Fire" is sweet and charming, but you'll need a box of Kleenex if you plan to make it a repeated listen. [www.thelyndsaydiaries.com]