Treetop Flyers are a five-piece Folk and Commercial Rock band from good old London Town. In 2013 they launched their debut album, The Mountain Moves, to great acclaim. Now, two and a half years later – after a catalogue of personal problems to overcome – they have returned to their own Soup Studios to record the follow-up, titled Palomino. It gets its release on the Loose label on 13 March, before the guys set out on some Spring live dates.

This band has been described variously as Folk, 60’s Psych Rock, Jazz, Pop, '70s West Coast Pop Rock. I have to confess I have other views. I certainly wouldn’t call it Folk in The Strawbs vein; and the only one of the aforementioned music genres I detected in the sound was Pop Rock. This is middle-of-the-road Rock, with Progressive influences, only without the long and meandering diversions of Prog. I hadn’t come across this group before, and I certainly have no problem promoting home-grown talent.

The album kicks-off solidly enough with 'You, Darling You', and 'Sleepless Nights'. These are pretty decent songs, but I wasn’t far into the tracks before I realised just how restrained the musicians are. I’m fully aware that crossing rhythm and tempo boundaries can unknowingly stray the music into another sub-genre, it’s just that on many occasions I just needed them to ‘let go’ with a memorable guitar piece. I found it very frustrating. Perhaps it’s due to the fact my tastes are somewhat heavier, but it’s ‘samey’ nevertheless. There’s a great piano and keyboard outro on one of the later songs, and I’m intrigued to imagine what the great Jon Lord would have done with it. However, when a band finds the sound they are excited by they should stay in that general area and push the boundaries, so I can’t really criticise the Treetop Flyers for being what they are: a pretty fine combo.

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Ty Power