Treetop Flyers – Bury The Past

A transatlantic gang of janglers play pretty, sad tunes that smell of sagebrush and feel like a night under the stars. But this is not Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young so much as Crosby, Stills and Nash the Younger. The Treetop Flyers (their name seemingly lifted from a Stephen Stills track) are the next big thing in the world of gentle, well-mannered folk rock revival. Not a crowded pond to plunge into, but if you’re going to do something you may as well do it well, and the reproduction of the sound and feel of a Woodstock campfire is uncanny. And it’s déjà vu all over again. The 50-year-old era to which they hark back is one that was already sitting on 50 years of cultural debt. Those sounds from the sixties are asking us to drift off to the prairies and canyons of the untamed west, and their contemporary counterparts are similarly mythological and fabulous in scope.

Mountain Song, the EP’s first of five tracks lays out the manifesto beautifully. Close country harmonies, gutsy rock guitar and that sly folk trick of spinning the most sinister tales in pretty, poetic verse. ‘A big iron hand came down on her.’ Why? We’re not told, but it works. Rose Is in the Yard is the closest the band come to flirting with anti-folk sensibilities (they’re far too earnest to qualify really), it could almost be The Bees taking the mick. Is It All Worth It and Old Days are dreamy meambles through mesquite-scented gardens filled with tumble-weed and wist. There’s something about listening to young men talking about the old days that’s incongruously charming, like a monkey in a hat or tits on an owl.

Fleeter than foxes, these boys are the real deal. Once removed perhaps. Or possibly twice, but real.