ALBUM REVIEW: Time Being – Tree River
It’s no secret, the emo scene is overflowing like a coffee pot churning out cups that lack character. For every good cup of coffee, there’s a whole bag of beans that belong in the bin. And the emo scene is just the same. But when that one good cup comes along, it’s like sipping serotonin straight into your veins. On their first album in six years, Brooklyn’s TREE RIVER serve up the coffee cup you’ve been searching for. Time Being takes the lo-fi midwest emo they chugged out on 2014’s Inward and 2016’s Dark Matter, and offers up an injection of flavours, finding a mix of indie-emo and grunge-punk that sits somewhere in the middle of LAKES, MODERN BASEBALL, MOVEMENTS and OSO OSO. Better yet, just like baristas with latte art, Time Being does everything bigger and bolder; melodies that melt like buttery biscuits dipped in, and choruses that hit like the caffeine boost you’re craving.
Crossroading shoots out of the gate like a double-shot of espresso, cycling out chiming riffs until the rousing chorus has you shouting out loud “fuck apathy” like you’re full of beans, whilst Same Blood begins as a brooding black coffee that boils up into a sugary sweet mocha that melts your heart with the math-rock riff structures creating chaos with the dual vocals. It’s those dual vocals that truly let Time Being dazzle, showing the song-writing growth TREE RIVER have undergone over the years. Unfortunately, the moments Trevor Friedman and Julie Rozansky’s world’s collide are few and far between, with Same Blood and the softening shoegaze of Catalyst offering the highlights.
Thankfully, Time Being isn’t all espresso shots and bursts of caffeine. There’s substance, a method to the madness. Experiencing it from start to finish is to experience coffee’s effect on us; the aforementioned Catalyst and the anthemic, jangling indie-emo of closer Prospect Park serve as the perfect comedown from caffeine, whilst the frenetic blitzkrieg blasts of Little Ripper and Laughing With are those moments your brain’s on fire with ideas.
Time Being sets itself apart from all the other emo baristas with its intricate beatnik coffee-shop poetry that permeates its lyrics. Simply put, if you were to take a microscope and place Brooklyn under it, Time Being would be the soundtrack to pottering through the streets of Brooklyn mid-pandemic, with all the trials and tribulations it brings. Unlike its peers, however, it doesn’t look to the past, but instead offers positive affirmations for the future whilst reflecting on the present, making the smallest, insignificant details of life sound like major incidents that make you nod in agreement. Take Crossroading for example, where trivial, universal experiences like the sound of silence transform into meaningful moments with magical wordplay: “It seems I seem to dream too loudly / I sleep so sound that the sound is maddening.”
Whilst songs like Journey Proud look to the future with simple conviction – “I’m not gonna drown, in the underground / Ready, writing new songs to swallow / All the silences, all the violent whispers and woes / This is working now and I’m journey proud / finally found my sound” – others like Homesick hide the parts of the pandemic we’d rather leave behind metaphors and similes – “I try to climb up my family tree / Its limbs are lost like an amputee.”
In a world full of coffee shops, and a scene filled with barista-like bands, TREE RIVER have brewed the best cup we’ve tasted in quite some time with a flavourful take on indie-emo that deserves to swim above the crowd.
Rating: 9/10
Time Being is set for release on April 1st via Big Scary Monsters.
Like TREE RIVER on Facebook.