Earlier this month, the San Jose 5-piece, Fossil Trees, released a single, 5 minute track of glistening, gut-punching, guitar-driven, dream-pop. FT is mired in the San Jose scene, citing the influence of acts like Picture Atlantic, A Yawn Worth Yelling and Pantheon to go with a slough of other varied, yet congruent national bands. “So Slow” is as pensive and crystalline as it is syrupy and abstract. The song’s texture hints at shoegaze, pop, soul and alt-rock, all mixed up to produce a smooth-edged, highly-palatable lamentation.
A mid-tempo string of singular notes open “So Slow,” before the band launches into the track’s heavier, power-pop stanza. Soft and heavy alternate between a verse/chorus song structure, as a remarkably soulful, falsetto voice, and a frantic, tremolo guitar joins in on the choruses. The resulting texture has a wave-like quality; a waxing and waning, inspiring listeners’ emotional upheaval at the song’s direction.
But a half-time breakdown disrupts the song’s more lunar movements, splitting the tempo in half and posing a more meditative passage. The voices, both high and low, take on a pop/soul tinge, complementing the chromatic, jazz-feel and ever-so-slight wah-wah play of the guitar. The track finally finishes with a return to the energetic chorus.
Fossil Tree’s drummer, Joseph Head VI, goes deeper into the song’s origin and meaning:
“Well, the song is all based off the mind and how it plays with you your whole life; we get stuck on the same memories . . . Sometimes these memories move in slow motion so you can see everything more closely . . . We messed around with tempos and halftime feels in the song to reflect the moments where you’re wondering why the memories are there . . . like your mind's exploding, and then when things start to make sense in the eye of the storm and you walk out with a new outlook on everything.”
Hear/download “So Slow” via bandcamp.
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Coincidentally, Fossil Tree just released their very first music video. You can see “We Are Heard” by clicking the link.
