Earlier this week, when Brisbane two-piece Treehouse Letters unveiled their new self-titled EP, we were immediately immersed in their heartfelt indie-folk sounds.
So fresh off the EP’s release, we caught up with the band themselves for a complete run-down of each track. Take it away Ethan and Dom…
Hot off the release of their new self-titled EP, we caught up with Brisbane duo Treehouse Letters for a complete track-by-track run-down.
We Tell Ourselves
ETHAN: Our collaboration began with me cherry-picking lines from Dom’s diary. The first line – ‘the past is just a story we tell ourselves’ – was a stand-alone entry. I put it to music quite spontaneously and away we went. I like to think that switching the vocal melody for the piano riff at the end and little bits of ornamentation like that make a fairly pedestrian song a lot more robust and interesting.
DOM: I thought it had quite a relaxed feel to it. The major 7 seven chords Ethan used in the riff had a Jack Johnson vibe. For the lyrics, we floated around the idea that people seem to always desire living through past experiences and emotions in order to make a possibly bad situation less confronting.
Misconceived
DOM: I wrote the first version of the song in grade 9 as an instrumental. I always doubted we would release it as a song, but with Ethan adding a bridge and tickling some keys I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.
ETHAN: Dom’s baby, for the most part. And what a beautiful, radiant baby it is! I had to twist his arm to get this one recorded. He was a bit coy about it for some reason. The music has a kinda naïve feel. The lyrics are no less earnest but they seem to convey an extra level of awareness above that naivety? Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Dream Machine
DOM: One of my favourites of all the songs Ethan has written – I find it enchanting. Also, like a lot of my favourite lyrics, it’s personal but not so far as to make it unrelatable. We’ll hopefully hear more songs where my obnoxious guitar isn’t interfering with a beautifully written piano piece.
ETHAN: I liked the idea of calling it Dream Machine because it makes no sense. Dreaming seems like the most animal activity imaginable, firmly in the domain of the fleshy, non-silicon kind of robots.
I was trying to capture that half-awake, half-asleep feeling with the music. It’s like an unsettling, schizophrenic sort of lullaby. That, combined with the unusual meter and the fact that I was reading a lot of Franz Kafka at the time probably explains the weird, hypnagogic feel of the lyrics.
It’s definitely personal and definitely addressed to someone but I must disclose that the last verse is inspired (read: outright purloined) from a letter that Kafka wrote to Milena Jesenská, a woman he was infatuated with:
“Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.”
Wow. What a smooth operator. How charmed she must have been.
Drama Queen
ETHAN: Some cynical indie-folk devotees might argue that the subject matter we tackle is quite trivial. Some have gone as far as saying that it’s quadrivial. The fact of the matter is that songwriters will generally write about whatever is occupying a substantial plot of their brains’ real estate at any given time. When I think about it, I can begin to see what some of my go-to topics are – the banality of everyday life, interpersonal connection, love, death, spirituality and, as exemplified by Drama Queen, mental health.
We jammed out the musical skeleton of it in my backyard upon a grey and inebriated night. When we decided what it was about, the rest of the writing was pretty fluid. Knowing what a song is about before writing it is the best case scenario for both the songwriter and any listener who wants to make sense of them. Otherwise, a songwriter is merely fumbling around in the dark trying to find a light switch and, in doing so, risks drowning in a maze of mixed metaphors.
DOM: The opening line “3 chords down the road” refers simply to the 3 chords this song (almost exclusively) uses. It’s simple but it builds to a place where, vocally, I can really belt it out. My description of playing the song is that it’s something fun, light and catchy, in juxtaposition against the lyrics.
The Treehouse Letters EP is available now. Listen above.
