Review: Treefight for Sunlight show at Botanique

The copy of Treefight for Sunlight's debut album A Collection of Vibrations for Your Skull that I bought ahead of the band's show in Brussels on Tuesday this week has a promotional sticker quoting a review from The Guardian that presents this four-piece from Denmark as "one of the most glorious things we've heard this year", and I couldn't agree more.

TFS's first musical effort has influences that go from classical music to the West Coast melodies epitomized till today by the Beach Boys, and it can take the credit for being a piece of work that, while reverberating with a retro echo, still sounds furiously contemporary. As it is the case of She & Him, my favourite new band making "old" music, the music of TFS has that rare quality of agelessness.

It is hard not to draw comparisons with MGMT, possibly the most influential band of the decade, not least because of the choirboy resonance and of their ability to write instantly joyous teenage symphonies. The Danish quartet's aspiration might be less ambitious than those of the New Yorkers, but the final result is equally ecstatic.

TFS performed at Botanique's diminutive Witloof Bar on Tuesday, March 22, maybe an appropriate venue for a band that has achieved greatness before popularity. Admittedly, the hall looked discouragingly lifeless when I arrived with an unusual punctuality, which was due to my determination not to miss a single note of a show that featured no support act, but by the time these four cordial Danes started off their gig there was a comparatively large, if not altogether enthusiastic, group of listeners.

Inevitably, the show was economical in its timing, which is no wonder for a band that has only one record that clocks in at less than 40 minutes, but they juiced it up with a couple of covers, including an excellent version of the classic Wuthering Heights, one of my favourite tunes ever, which Morten Winther Nielsen delivered with a nearly scary vocal resemblance to Kate Bush's original.

The heights that the group can reach were clear merely 1O minutes after the show's start, as they played the retro-psychedelic What Became of You and I?, the song that first called my attention prior to the album's official release earlier in 2011, while they understandably left for the encore the true gem of the album, Facing the Sun (clip below), which is also the best song I've heard this year, and not because The Guardian says so.

The upside of such intimate concerts is that you have the chance to talk with the band. The guys of TFS are easy-going and nice and they seemed genuinely upset they couldn't join us for a drink after the show, but their bus was waiting to take them directly to Berlin, where they were to perform the following day. Nonetheless, I talked with them (hence the fifth guy in the picture) and wished them all the best for their tour. I confirm here the prediction I shared with them. Their present is promising. Their future will be big.