Vents Magazine Review: “Sapling Tree” by The Spikes

Dead Horse Branding
Sep 3
2 min read

The Spikes’ new single “Sapling Tree” is a paradox: intimate yet cinematic, fragile yet unyielding. Guided by Iago Haussman’s dusky baritone, the track feels less like a song and more like a spiritual reckoning—one that wanders through heartbreak, longing, and fleeting moments of beauty before resolving into something timeless.

“Sapling Tree” captures the sensation of being both broken by life and held together by it. The chorus, grounding the fragments, becomes a mantra: even when the journey bends, blooms, and breaks, the tree of life endures. It’s a universal truth cloaked in personal vision.

Haussman’s creative process—employing the Burroughs/Gysin “Cut Up” method—shows in the way imagery darts like lightning between verses. Lines collide like memories, reassembled in patterns that feel accidental but destined, as though the song itself was born out of chaos finding its order.

Visually, the accompanying video shot in Tangier by acclaimed filmmaker Michael Haussman deepens the mythology. Tangier’s mysticism, its timeless decay and vibrance, reflects the duality of the track: a place where past and present collapse, where chaos and order coexist. The fact that Burroughs and Gysin invented the very technique that birthed these lyrics in Tangier only adds another layer of synchronicity, blurring chance and inevitability.

Where The Spikes’ earlier releases (“Guns for the Children” and “Dancing (In the Palm of My Hand)”) leaned into starkness and raw provocation, “Sapling Tree” feels more like surrender. It doesn’t reject chaos; it accepts it, transforms it, and finds beauty in its persistence.

In the end, “Sapling Tree” leaves the listener with something rare: hope. A reminder that even when the thorns of life wound us, growth follows. The tree continues. The wind keeps blowing. And within the disorder, something solid remains.