Treetop Flyers - To Bury The Past EP
'Mountain Song' features harmonies hand-picked from the Crosby, Stills and Nash back catalogue, together with the part bluesy, part folky guitars employed by The Band.
Before you even plunge into Treetop Flyers' music, you sort of know what to expect. The CD sleeve depicts rolling fields in the distance, all in sunbaked beiges, browns and greens like some lost set from Little House On The Prairie, topped with 'Treetop Flyers' written in the sort of font usually reserved for saloon signs in a Western. Song titles include the quaint sounding 'Mountain Song' and 'Rose Is In The Yard'. A cursory google reveals, as expected, that most of the band have beards. Some are bare foot. Chances are these are unlikely to be the new saviours of pop-punk.
Those doubting the authenticity might have half a case, as despite two of the five (singer Reid and drummer Tomer) being from America, they hail not from Missouri or Nebraska, but rather more urban New York. However, the music does not disappoint, at least in terms of mirroring the image, with the band's sound paying a quite obvious homage to 1970s folk-rock. For example, 'Mountain Song' features harmonies hand-picked from the Crosby, Stills and Nash back catalogue - incidentally Treetop Flyers are named after a Stephen Stills song – together with the part bluesy, part folky guitars employed by past staples of the genre such as The Band. The obligatory lap steel, beautifully played, completes the time warp.
Almost all of the tracks on 'To Bury The Past' continue along such a course, to varying degrees of success. Of these, 'Rose Is In The Yard' is probably the highlight, with its shimmering fretwork and sweetly sung vocal, whilst in contrast 'It's About Time' plods along rather inconsequentially and at times seems to be only a sitar away from descending into the kind of mystical jam-along which wretched 60s revivalists Kula Shaker attempted to re-popularise in the mid 1990s. Tellingly, it is when Treetop Flyers approach things slightly differently that they strike gold. 'Is It All Worth It' sits somewhere between the good old days and the more contemporary sound of nu-folkers Mumford & Sons, and actually comes across as a more mature reading of the latter's work.
Whilst it is fairly clear what Treetop Flyers are trying to achieve, they only really get two-thirds of the way there. All of the requisite parts seem to exist, but unfortunately at the moment they lack the killer songs which made their evident heroes so good. Nonetheless, 'To Bury The Past' is a solid if unspectacular introduction to the band, suggesting there may be more to come.
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