You should see my face when I find music that makes me pause. I lean in, close my eyes, purse my lips together, and press my headphones tighter to my ears. The world fades away and there’s only the sound. Such was the case with treesreach.
Hailing from Cedar Rapids, treesreach has been active in the Iowa scene for more than a decade, though they started musical life as Live Broadcast. Since they changed their name, the band has dropped three EPs, two full length albums (including a debut double album) and countless singles, with their newest record The Sometimes River releasing earlier this summer. Members Riley Thurm and Dillon Rairdin met as teens, and their musical talents were already deeply integrated into their lives.
“I’ve always been more of an ear player, so my first musical experiences were figuring out songs from video games and movie soundtracks,” Rairdin said. “I can remember being a kid before YouTube and having Soulcalibur II fired up on my GameCube, and I wanted to learn the intro music, so it would play and I would try to play along and then I’d run over and hit reset. I spent one afternoon [doing that] probably two dozen times. My dream job when I was a kid was to be a resident composer at Nintendo.”
Thurm has been encapsulated by the guitar his whole life.
“I think I was three years old when I first got into guitar. I saw someone playing a guitar and I was like, ‘What is that? That’s so cool, I don’t know how it works, I don’t even know where this sound comes from, but I’ve got to do that,’” Thurm shared. “I bothered my parents about it, and they’re like ‘You’re three years old, you’re not gonna play guitar yet.’”
Inclined to stay
treesreach took root early in Iowa, as both members were born and raised here. They see the local scene as impressively engaged, and while many artists leave Iowa for other Midwest music cities, treesreach thrives on the hidden beauty behind small town musicianship.
“I think [Iowa] has proven itself to have way more creative grit than most people would think,” Rairdin said. “There’s so much going on here that to me feels like musical family, and I’d rather be trying to make something vibrant happen here. You just need a good group of people doing it and local people talking about it, creating a buzz and caring about it.”
“I think about moving to Minneapolis or wherever, there would be more venues and probably more bands and more varieties, maybe,” Thurm added. “But I think it would be just as hard to get good shows and fill venues, and how much fun I’m having playing music is directly proportional to how much I connect with the people I’m doing it with.”
But they aren’t just an Iowa band. treesreach has received some national attention in the past couple of years. Getting noticed outside of Iowa can be a feat, but the band’s music has found its way onto Atwood Magazine and A&R Factory’s desks. Physically bringing that music out of state is a whole other story, though.
“The challenge for any indie band is going on tour without going into debt,” Rairdin said. “I mean, I’d want to be able to play anywhere. I would love to go out to the coasts, go out to Europe, but you know … debt. We’ll do what we can for now.”
Speaking of Europe, their music has found a home across the pond over the last few years.
“On streaming services, you can look at your analytics, you can see who’s listening to what and where, and we have, like, five Swedish listeners,” Rairdin smiled. “We also got played on a Danish radio station. They played a real deep cut from Some Night You Will Hear Me Crowing.”
A new way of feeling
The Sometimes River is 55 minutes of pure gold. An amalgamation of blues, jazz, indie and contemporary classical is what drives this band, which self-identifies as “genreless;” they remind me a ton of glass beach. The duo asked me what genre I would slot their music into, and I stumbled over myself. How do you put into words this feeling of warm sunshine, cool rain and quiet snowfall?
“I think genres are most useful in being able to explain a band to someone quickly,” Thurm shared. “There are some bands where that’s really useful, and there’s some bands where you could maybe do that song by song, and I think we’re just more one of those bands.”
“You could call it post-modern indie hopecore.” Rairdin smiled.
This album is full of hope. Comforting friends, finding love that makes you jump with joy, reminiscing about playing outside as a kid. I felt oddly safe listening to this record — like time and space have ceased to exist and all that’s on my plate is this.
treesreach’s debut album, Some Night You Will Hear Me Crowing, tells a story of escapism, of emotional highs and lows. There’s no “story” with this new album, but more of a feeling.
“The Sometimes River gets its name from a literal place in the neighborhood where Riley grew up. It’s literally a swale meant to direct the water where it needs to go when it’s storming really bad,” Rairdin said. The environment of Iowa is portrayed well on this album — lush greenery, constant hills, bodies of water flowing together, unpredictable weather.
“This whole idea of the rain, coming and filling the river to make it do the thing it was built to do. I think spiritually that happens with us in life a lot, too,” Rairdin added. “Moments of just being filled with inspiration and lust for life, and suddenly you kind of feel like you’re always under the surface, and you kind of need some help from the divine to pull it out of you.”
treesreach’s music also reminds me of a movie soundtrack, with its big theatricality. Given that Rairdin grew up listening to video game soundtracks, that comes as no surprise. After some intense back-and-forth (and a minute of attempted telepathy), the duo shared that they’d love to write music for Edgar Wright, Wes Anderson or maybe Steven Spielberg.
“I would love to see what a coming-of-age movie built around The Sometimes River would look like,” Rairdin started off. “Or make Some Night You Will Hear Me Crowing ultimately a coming-of-age movie that’s really sweet, but through this lens of dim, dreamy, nightmarish, whatever. But there’s something really sweet at the center of it.”
“If there was a lost Spielberg movie from the golden days that didn’t have any music to it, that would be the coolest thing ever to just see what I can do,” Thurm joined in. “Do something different just as far as movies with a ton of character and vibe and nostalgia, which is a big component in our music.”
I can tell there’s a deep bond between these two, a combination stronger than steel: peanut butter and chocolate, green tea and honey, Lennon and McCartney, rain and rivers. treesreach hasn’t performed since 2023, and I, for one, am eager to see how they make their comeback.
The Sometimes River is out now, everywhere. You can pre-order their vinyl, which will include some exclusive tracks that didn’t make the album.
