Tall Tall Trees will perform Saturday, July 26.

If there is one musical artist you should SEE this year, Tall Tall Trees might be it. Of note, Mike Savino doesn’t play the banjo so much as unleashes it – looped, distorted, disorienting, making it do things that surely violate the unwritten rules of banjo. He smacks it. He bows it. He whacks it with a mallet. All the while dancing from pedal to pedal setting up a plethora of effects. When he is done, it often doesn’t even sound like a banjo, rather more like guitar, bass, drums or keys.

Performing as Tall Tall Trees (after a George Jones/Roger Miller song), Savino doesn’t really push the boundaries of “banjo music,” he ignores them altogether. The hums, whirs, squawks and thwacks set the backdrop for thoroughly modern, catchy and memorable songs. Oh, and he also sings, very well in fact, while orchestrating this madness. Politeness and conformity be damned, this is expansive psychedelic folk-rock with electronic rocket fuel to infinity and beyond. One minute, it’s a backwoods stomp, and the next, it’s dreampop where the stars blink in rhythm and you can float through the melodies. Wild? Uh-huh!

–Jay Nelson