Treefight For Sunlight - Treefight For Sunlight (Bella Union)

A debut of finest proportions, brought to you by four beautiful Danish man-children, the self titled album injects sunshine straight through your ears and into your brain, caressing your synapses with a heady sense of promise. Sounds too good to be true, but with every listen it is like the first time, and every track is over too quickly. ‘A Dream Before Sleep’ sets up like the prologue of a play, opening up like the petals of a rose, and showering dew on the ground.

Such florid language would normally repulse Bearded’s masses, no doubt, but this is the purest form of feeling garnered from the opener. Awash with choral voices, flat tones intertwining with falsetto chimes, weaving nicely into ‘Facing The Sun’ which proffers “everything and everyone should be facing the sun” recognizing the power of the positive. This child-like wonder is most notably found here, as light-speed bass-notes babble, trodden down by a light foot of piano keys. ‘Riddles and Rhymes’ goes even further, tapping into the children that Treefight effortlessly become. In strains of the kitsch flute and cascading harp, the melancholy of the warning “how can they know, how the children of the television shows are going to grow” poses the difficulties of nostalgic innocence.

Treefight have a way of capturing these moments of purity, with ‘Rain Air’ harmonizing through sounds of wind and rain stirring the trees, breaking out into joyous rapture like the sun breaking through clouds. This is texturised by drum-beats echoing raucous thunder. Bliss! Melancholy hints feed into the more lamenting ‘Time Stretcher’, steady in its pace of driving, animalistic drums, which anchor the light trips of an exhaustive flute, forming beautiful tributes in the air, etching the decline in turmoil, executed brutally by the following silence.

The likes of ‘They Never Did Know’ has a certain filmic quality, streaming from the of genius Ennio Morricone and his Western scores which play out desolate battles. Everything has been painstakingly crafted within this niche, whilst ‘Tambourhinocerous Jam’ echoes the stirring flitters that are succumbed to in a musical exploration with other such adventurers.

The finest moments experienced on this record is the addictive ‘The Universe Is A Woman’. Awash with insecurity, tumultuous feeling, questions of truth, and inaction, the beauty of this track lies in the slow descent into a cacophony of voices echoing through each other, as the lyrical twists relish the feeling of being adrift from time. ‘What Became Of You And I’ acts the hardened brother-track, the heady tinkling keys mocking the plodding bass structure whilst lyrics “whatever I feel it ain’t all for you” act like armor.

Ending with ‘You And The New World’, choral plots shimmering atop the babbling combination of brittle drums and bass, supported by breezy piano, it’s a summation of what has come before. This tumult of ideas revels in the not-knowing. Youthful and elegant with every beat, every symbol and chord, a glistening moment in and of itself. It is a shiny diamond of a delight to behold!