Worcester indie folk trio berm conjure a brooding, earthbound beauty on their debut album ‘highway through the trees,’ a haunting, hypnotic collection steeped in memory, mortality, and the bittersweet passage of time. Richly atmospheric and darkly comforting, the record unfolds like a drive down familiar roads at dusk, where childhood memories flicker through the trees and the people who shaped our lives remain close, even as the years carry us further away.

Stream: ‘highway through the trees’ – berm

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><a href="https://berm-worcester.bandcamp.com/album/highway-through-the-trees">highway through the trees by berm</a>

berm’s Dan Lambert can still give you directions to the places that shaped his childhood.

He remembers the pine trees in the front yard, the red brick façade of his family’s old home, the cool damp of his grandparents’ basement, and a driveway so easy to miss that he warns you when to turn around. On “leave this place,” the opening song on berm’s debut album, he retraces these old surroundings with remarkable precision, only to arrive at a startling refrain that seems to contradict every detail before it: “Leave this place you don’t belong.”

It’s a fitting, if not unsettling, introduction to highway through the trees, a haunting, hypnotic indie folk record that finds the Worcester, Massachusetts band sifting through the fragments of a life – childhood memories that arrive uninvited, friendships that endure across distance, and fleeting moments whose significance only becomes clear with time. Led by Lambert’s rich, searching baritone and nylon-string guitar, with delicate keyboards, atmospheric harmonies, and sweeping cello enriching the arrangements, the album unfolds like a collection of half-remembered dreams, at once familiar and elusive.

highway through the trees - berm — highway through the trees – berm

take in the smell of cedar mulch
hanging in the air and feel
the cool damp in the basement
of my grandparents place
where my cousins and I
used to climb
a boulder off to the side
of the driveway

park on the street
and never in the driveway
we share it with the neighbors
and he’ll yell at you
leave this place you don’t belong
oh you don’t belong
oh you don’t belong
in this place

– “leave this place,” berm

Across ten deeply personal songs, berm – the trio of Lambert, his wife Gretchen Neff Lambert (keyboard and piano), and Z Harris (guitar, banjo, percussion, backup vocals) – explore the complicated relationship between memory and meaning, confronting the passage of time with curiosity, compassion, and an acute awareness of life’s impermanence. highway through the trees is a poignant meditation on everything we carry with us – the places we’ve left behind, the people who’ve shaped us, and the moments that remain long after the lives surrounding them have changed.

While highway through the trees reaches far into Lambert’s past, the story of berm begins much closer to the present. “As our first full-length album, the story of this release is really the backstory of the band itself,” Lambert tells Atwood Magazine. “berm started as a solo project in early 2023, when I began playing around the Worcester area. Gretchen and Z both joined later that year. While we’ve worked with a handful of other musicians, the three of us have solidified as the core of berm and I continue to serve as the songwriter and leader of the project.”

“Since that time we’ve performed a few times each month in bars, backyards, living rooms and other venues across New England and I’ve written dozens of songs. I’ve found that I rely on songwriting for my mental health. When I’m feeling my best I am writing almost continuously, completing the demo phase of a new one every few weeks. Only a handful of those ever feel good enough to move forward from that stage, but the sheer quantity of output means that we felt we had enough for an album long before we stepped into the studio. It was just a matter of deciding what to include and in what order.”

The final stage of that process brought another creative perspective into the fold. “We met Bradford Krieger through friends a few years ago, and when we felt ready, we booked recording time with him at Big Nice, the studio he runs in Lincoln, RI. As we had expected, Brad was great to work with. In addition to his contributions on bass, pedal steel and as engineer for the release, he served as a creative and insightful sounding board as we brought the album to completion. While narrowing down the tracks for highway through the trees we cut many songs that we love and we’re looking forward to returning to the studio as soon as we can to bring those out into the daylight.”

With a wealth of material and a trusted collaborator in place, the challenge became giving berm’s first full-length album an identity of its own.

“We released several EPs leading up to this album and had a list of things we wanted to do differently on this one,” Lambert explains. “Some points were purely logistical, like building in far more studio time than we thought we needed so we had flexibility to play and experiment, and some were stylistic, like adding subtle double-tracking to my vocals.”

Those changes were modest in isolation, but they pointed to a larger ambition for the record.

“Overall, our goal was to create an indie folk album with a sonic landscape that was distinct, emotionally compelling, and in service to the lyrics,” he says. “Benchmarks/inspirations included The Ocean Rose by Wildflower, Lost Wisdom by Mount Eerie, either/or by Elliott Smith, Saint Bartlett by Damien Jurado, and Mount Hope by Pygmy Lush. We hoped that this album would be kind of a ‘capstone’ encapsulating the time we’ve been playing together and developing the berm sound. There was plenty of experimentation and discovery that occurred in the studio but for the most part I feel we stayed true to our intentions.”

lift the cigarette
and let the morning air
drift over you.
you know you can’t be here
but where you fit
is fading into blue sky
you know I wish I knew

back before I quit, I used to fantasize
about that first breath of smoke
in the morning
I imagined it would be so sweet
transfixed by false memories

and now that you have gone
i sometimes think
that it might be the same
a rosey rear view mirror
in my mind’s eye
but no, I remember right
I remember right, I remember

– “cigarette,” berm

For all the thought and care poured into its creation, Lambert is considerably less elaborate when asked to describe the finished album in just three words. “Melancholic memory tour.”

The title itself gives that ‘memory tour’ its landscape, offering a striking visual metaphor for the way our past returns to us in fleeting, unpredictable flashes.

“In the song ‘highway through the trees’ this phrase is a metaphor for memory, describing how you can catch little glimpses of the past the same way you might see sunlight reflected off passing cars partially obscured by a forest. The metaphor used in that song also applies to the album overall – this is a collection of flashes of memory and musings, some divorced from their context and incomplete, captured and arranged into a linear experience. So extending the metaphor a bit, I hope listening to this album feels like standing in a dark forest and catching fragments of images and stories filtering through the trees.”

It’s a beautiful image, made all the more affecting by how much remains obscured. Lambert’s recollections invite us to look closer, even as the passage of time makes it impossible to recover the past in its entirety. And after spending more than a year immersed in these songs, he remains curious about how they’ll resonate with people encountering them for the first time.

“This release has been all-consuming for me personally, taking up the majority of my brainspace and creative energy for the last year-plus. As such, I feel so immersed in this material it’s hard for me to clearly see how it introduces our sound to a new listener. I can, however, speak to my hopes for how it is received.

“I hope highway through the trees leads a listener through a melancholic, pensive journey with compelling peaks and hypnotic valleys, and leaves them with unresolved ideas bouncing in their heads. I hope that the images and details presented are specific and relatable enough to start a dialogue with a listener, and open-ended and enigmatic enough to linger in their mind after the record ends.”

I watched the snakes across the waves
heads lifted up like angels
tongues flickering like flames
the fish i caught was circling slower
in the cooler next to me
that someone brought outside
and when they called me in for dinner
i felt the thin white bones
fragile as the moon

at night the lake is warm
like puddles in a parking lot
cotton curtains ripple
with the hymns
the memories flicker back
like sunlight off the windshield
of a passing car on a highway
through the trees

On highway through the trees, berm’s brooding, earthbound indie folk creates a rich, darkly comforting atmosphere for reflection and rumination, inviting listeners to linger with the memories, emotions, and unanswered questions that shape our lives.

Anchored by Lambert’s resonant baritone and nylon-string guitar, the album’s acoustic foundations gradually bloom into enveloping arrangements of droning keyboards, delicate harmonies, and mournful cello – each layer swelling and receding around his words, giving his bittersweet recollections an almost tangible emotional weight.

On “leave this place,” the cyclical guitar accompaniment lends his journey through childhood homes an almost dreamlike quality, while the stirring, slow-burning “cigarette” wrestles with the possibility that distance has made an old friendship seem more beautiful than it really was. Throughout the record, berm find extraordinary emotional weight in ordinary experiences, allowing the smallest details to carry the greatest significance.

That sensitivity comes into particularly sharp focus on “heron,” a moving reflection on faith, acceptance, and the kindness Lambert has experienced from his mother despite their differing beliefs. Amid its contemplative atmosphere, he delivers one of the album’s most affecting lines: “i thought of you / and how i don’t believe / your god is real / but he makes you kind.” The lyric cuts through the imagery with disarming honesty, revealing the compassion at the center of his songwriting.

“I like songs that fade seamlessly from sensory descriptions and loose narration into clear statements about what the song is about,” Lambert explains. “Kind of lulling the listener with a collage of loose images and ideas before hitting them with clarity. I’ve tried to do that in many songs but feel I got closer to my target in this one than I have before.”

That emotional clarity gives way to a striking change in pace as “heron” transitions into the more raucous “song for nate,” where crashing instrumentation accompanies another recollection of unexpected kindness – this time from a high school friend whose patience and understanding have stayed with Lambert for decades.

“Every time I listen through I’m proud of the transition from ‘heron’ into ‘song for nate.’ I find heron hypnotizing and puts me in a chill, contemplative mindset. To my ears this contrasts nicely with the abrupt and raucous beginning of ‘song for nate.’”

I was sixteen and sick
in the back of your van
half smoking a cigarette
that slipped out of my hand
and burnt a hole in the seat
I only know
because someone else told me

and for all of your swagger
and all your hard lines you were kind

Nature, meanwhile, becomes an almost living presence throughout highway through the trees, its changing landscapes reflecting the transience of the experiences Lambert holds dear. “snowstorm” finds beauty in a winter retreat with friends, its vivid imagery preserving a passing moment in breathtaking detail: “snowstorm / blinding like white lace / curtains on the interstate / and draped along the trees.”

“This appeals to me as I feel the comparison is especially evocative,” Lambert says. “When I read these lines I can see the snow in the air and on the tree limbs along the highway, frozen in time like hanging lace curtains.”

The yearning “winter blue” reaches toward another season entirely, its longing for summer made all the more affecting by the addition of fellow musician Mary Elizabeth Remington’s ethereal vocals.

“I’m also always struck by Mary Elizabeth Remington’s vocals on ‘winter blue.’ Her voice is beautiful and haunting and I was so glad she was willing to join us on that track.”

And at the album’s thematic center lies its title song, a mesmerizing journey through childhood recollections whose extraordinary clarity raises as many questions as it answers. Here, Lambert offers the image that binds the record together: “the memories flicker back / like sunlight off the windshield / of a passing car on a / highway through the trees.” The lyric brings the album’s central tension into focus – the past can appear before us with startling vividness, yet we can never be entirely certain of what we’re seeing.

“This stands out to me as I feel it is a central idea for the album overall,” Lambert reflects. “As detailed earlier, it functions in the song as a metaphor for the way memory can come back in fractured bits of surprising clarity. So much of the album explores memory, and these lyrics feel like they could be a summary of the release overall.”

As highway through the trees unfolds, its fascination with memory gives way to a more sobering awareness of time itself. “epilogue” confronts the heartbreaking final years of Lambert’s grandmother’s life as she struggled with Alzheimer’s, while “last time” considers how life’s final experiences often pass without warning – a farewell to a loved one, a swim in the ocean, an ordinary day whose significance only becomes clear in hindsight. These reflections cast the kindness and gratitude of “heron” and “song for nate” in an even more affecting light. Throughout the album, berm hold grief and gratitude side by side, recognizing how the passing of time can make even our most fleeting encounters feel precious.

**The beauty of highway through the trees lies in how readily Lambert’s personal recollections invite us to revisit our own.**

A childhood home we can still picture perfectly, a friendship changed by distance, an act of kindness that has stayed with us for years – these experiences transcend the particulars of his life, becoming touchstones for our own. By giving such careful attention to the everyday moments we so often overlook, berm encourage us to consider what we’ve carried forward, whom we’ve loved, and what we might want to appreciate more fully while it’s still here. There’s a profound sense of empathy running through this record, and a recognition that even the smallest gestures can leave lasting impressions.

For Lambert, inviting listeners into these memories means leaving space for their own interpretations.

“From a songwriting perspective my goal is always to find a sweet spot between specificity and ambiguity,” he explains. “I want my writing to have enough specific ideas for a listener to grasp onto and consider relative to their own experiences, but enough ambiguity that there isn’t only a single meaning or message associated with those ideas. When I’m listening to music I find myself bored when there is too much specificity – when only one meaning is possible I find there’s nothing to bounce around in my head after listening. Too much ambiguity, though, and I start to wonder if there is any intention at all, or just an empty collection of words. My goal in songwriting is to strike a balance between these qualities and provide an experience that is both relatable and enigmatic.”

**And while highway through the trees marks a defining achievement for berm, the creative journey that brought the trio here is already carrying them forward.**

“The members of berm all share a love of learning and growing creatively. As with prior releases, highway through the trees represents a culmination of all the experimentation and refinement that preceded it and serves as a launching point for the next thing. We’re already drafting tracklists and thinking through what we might need to learn or figure out to move berm to the next level. I’m proud of what we’ve completed and excited about what comes next.”

The album begins with directions to the places Lambert once called home and ends with questions about the moments we never realize we’re experiencing for the last time. Between those points, berm have created a deeply affecting portrait of a life in motion, finding beauty in the memories that endure and meaning in the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Below, Lambert takes us track by track through highway through the trees, sharing the people, places, and experiences that inspired each of its ten songs.

Stream berm’s haunting, deeply affecting debut album highway through the trees below, and follow Lambert down the winding roads of memory – to the places we’ve left behind, the people we’ll never forget, and the moments that made us who we are.

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:: stream/purchase highway through the trees here ::

:: connect with berm here ::

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Stream: ‘highway through the trees’ – berm

:: Inside highway through the trees ::

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leave this place

“leave this place” describes the location of each of my childhood homes, from the first I can remember to the last place I lived with family before moving out on my own. It ends with a refrain “leave this place, you don’t belong.” My childhood memories are important to me and shape who I am today, but I don’t belong there – I look back with a detached curiosity and no desire to return.

<a href="https://berm-worcester.bandcamp.com/album/highway-through-the-trees">highway through the trees by berm</a>

cigarette

“cigarette” is about how memory can become unreliable when it overlaps with absence. After a friend moved away, I found myself missing him but wondering if my memory could be trusted – a feeling that paralleled my relationship with cigarettes before I quit smoking. Back then if I didn’t have a cigarette lit I’d fixate on an idealized image of what the next one would feel like that was far better than the actual experience of smoking ever was. I wondered if my feelings about my friend were the same, but in the end concluded that I missed him not because of any warped perspective, but because he is truly a great dude.

epilogue

“epilogue” is about the last years of my grandmother’s life. After watching her mother and grandmother descend into Alzheimer’s, she knew what was ahead when she started experiencing symptoms herself. Over the following years her mind deteriorated while her body remained relatively healthy. I imagine her talking to death as the disease progressed, questioning what it’s waiting for. This song is about how death works by its own calendar, often with tragic results – she lingered for years past the point where she had a solid chance at dignity or happiness.

heron

“heron” is about how people in my life approach religion. Some well-intentioned folks have implied that they don’t truly want to know me if my beliefs differ from their own. Others have approached the topic with kindness and respect, understanding that while we believe different things, we share many compatible values. My mom has always lived out the latter, and I am deeply appreciative of that. Growing up she’d point out herons as reminders of her god’s love for her, and I think of her and her loving god whenever I see one.

<a href="https://berm-worcester.bandcamp.com/album/highway-through-the-trees">highway through the trees by berm</a>

song for nate

When I was in high school I was out with a few upperclassmen, had far too much to drink, and dropped a lit cigarette onto the seat of the minivan we were riding in, burning a hole in the upholstery. Nate, who owned the van, could have made me feel terrible about it but he didn’t – he kept it quiet and never brought it up. In the years since we have drifted apart and our lives have little in common, but I still feel gratitude for how he reacted.

snowstorm

“snowstorm” is about a trip out to western Mass with friends. We rented a cabin and played music in the living room while a huge snowstorm rolled in. To me this song is akin to flipping through a collection of photos from a really special time – moments and images that I love to recall.

calcified

This song explores the progression in life from being a child, with the whole world open to possibilities you can’t yet understand, to adulthood, where many opportunities are gone and the path forward has narrowed. While this evolution is natural and part of the experience of building your life into something that works for you, dwelling on this dynamic can feel scary and claustrophobic.