Treefight for Sunlight – Treefight for Sunlight

In Danish culture there’s a term hygge, which roughly translates to English as something akin to tranquillity, or the pleasure derived from being around comforting things and loved ones. Imagine then, if you will, cracking open a can of famous Danish mood enhancer on a pleasantly warm summer’s evening by the river, surrounded by friends, family, nature. On the stereo is playing the self-titled debut release from Bella Union’s latest signings, Treefight for Sunlight, transporting the listening throng from a leafy Scandinavian suburb to the west coast of the USA for a late 60s beach party.

That’s the world of Treefight for Sunlight, an album of love songs to people and to nature, of sunny harmonies a world away from fellow Danes Efterklang, Mew and Raveonettes. The four piece from North Jutland have, on last count, about three lead singers and exist in a post-Animal Collective world of sunny guitar pop. This is a plus point that makes these chaps sonically a lot more interesting than musical bedfellows past and present such as The Ruby Suns, and HAL. They’ve got that epic, soaring vocal harmony sound found on the more recent releases from Animal Collective and Panda Bear, lifting the rather more traditional arrangements away from what could have been a drab experience.

The record, thankfully, feels like a direct prescription hit of serotonin, making the opening lines of the first song ‘A Dream Before Sleep’ rather prescient. “All of the nurses / are going to leave me” go the harmonious voices, leading into the world of Treefight for Sunlight. This short intro, with echoes of Mercury Rev, flows into ‘You and the New World’, all bouncing piano and Afrobeat rhythms belying the fact that it’s a song about unrequited love. Most of the songs on Treefight for Sunlight launch in on piano and keyboard sounds, and quickly build around that base, adding Byrdsian jangle, Spector-esque drums and the occasional layer of pocket symphony orchestration.

A few of the finest tracks reveal the core themes of the record: ‘They Never Did Know’, all psychedelic rock vibes, fades out on a vocal line of “You don’t really want me”, while ‘Facing the Sun’ and ‘Rain Air’ (both lovely ELO style soft rockers) focus in on nature and manage the trick of using the lyric “Trees singing in the afternoon / rain crying in the morning sun” without it sounding twee – admittedly though, it doesn’t look great written down.

Despite a couple of wrong turnings (the pointless ‘Tambourhinoceros Jam’ and ‘Riddles in Rhymes’) the band end strongly with a couple of crackers. ‘What Became of You and I’, a TLOBF Song of the Day no less, is a gorgeous feelgood anthem for the brokenhearted, and end track ‘Time Stretcher’, a mournful psych comedown, with those nurses coming back to pull the listener out of a leafy reverie.

As a debut, Treefight for Sunlight is an extremely promising start for these young Danes. A broadening of their palette might help, along with being less unremittingly cheerful, but having said that – and it might just be the fog and gloom of the opening months of the year working on me – this record makes me feel happy.