Scratching away at the silence like a meandering force no melody-lover would ever want to die, the guitar splashes a bit of color onto the canvas that is “So Lost” like no other instrument possible could have. Its role in the harmonies we’ll discover in this song and the nineteen others it’s joined by in the new album Florescence by Timberline cannot be overstated, and to be perfectly frank, I think it’s as essential to our interpreting the greater narrative of the LP as any of the lyrics here are. Both the slow-rolling string play of “Long Sleeves” and urgent picking of “Temporary” produce similarly engaging results, and they’re accompanied by a voice I believe to have been made for this style of music.
“I wanna be surrounded by static / Took by florescent lights / I wanna be surrounded by static / Made into florescent light,” croons a surreal Timberline in the lyrics of the Howard James Kenny-esque “Static,” and as simplistic as the verses are, they encapsulate the energy of the backdrop in this piece elegantly. There’s a boldness to the relationship this man has with the music in songs like this one, “August Snows,” “Better Days,” and “Now,” and it doesn’t take a professional critic to recognize it off the bat here.
The harmonies within “February 13th,” the title cut in Florescence, “Second Guess,” “Telogen,” and “Every Night” do a lot to contextualize the subtle poetic cues in this record, but I love that Timberline is never completely dependent on one specific method when it comes to framing his statements behind the mic. He’s exploring his outlet without having to indulge in any of the theatrics a lot of his peers have been going so far as to design complete LPs around, for reasons mostly unknown to critics like myself.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Florescence-Timberline/dp/B08CT83LR7
Florescence has a flow that puts most of the alternative folk music I’ve been spinning this summer to shame, and its ambient qualities help make songs like “Hi,” “Flannel,” “Towhee,” “I Miss Now,” and the aforementioned sleeper hit “Static” feel like they’re ready to dominate college radio a lot sooner than later. The DIY nature of this material is largely responsible for giving the entire tracklist its humanized feel, but the fact that it can stay both raw and remarkably easy to listen to from start to finish is something that you probably aren’t going to find in another concept record this year.
There’s nothing but promise to rave about in this young player, and if Timberline continues to get the kind of attention from the west coast indie beat that he has been, I believe the ascent of both this brand and that of Messy should be considered a given. Florescence pushes emotion to the forefront of the mix and removes even the slightest of candidates for interference from the table before cards have even been dealt. Meticulousness is impossible to evade in this tracklist, but moreover, so is a feeling that we’re listening to something personal and not made specifically for the mainstream spotlight.
Rachel Townsend