The Family Tree: The Leaves

The Leaves is the final installment of Ben Cooper's ambitious 'Family Tree' trilogy, a project spanning nearly a decade that chronicles the fictional Northcote family in the 19th century. While previous entries 'The Roots' and 'The Branches' established the sonic palette of found-sound percussion and layered folk, 'The Leaves' serves as the most polished and emotionally resonant chapter. Cooper, recording primarily as a solo artist under the Radical Face moniker, utilized his signature 'bedroom production' style to stack hundreds of vocal and instrumental tracks, creating a 'wall of folk' effect. The album is noted for its Faulknerian narrative depth, with tracks like 'Third Family Portrait' and 'Bad Blood' tying up long-running lyrical themes of inheritance, secrets, and the weight of ancestry. Critically, it has been compared to the mid-2000s chamber-folk of Sufjan Stevens, though Cooper's focus on historical fiction and organic textures gives it a distinct, more insular character.