Family Tree by Family Tree

Guitarist and composer Skyler Hill’s latest release “Family Tree” explores the unspoken difficulties and anxieties of human interaction through fleeting melodic lines, exquisite dissonances, pulsing rhythms, and bombastic dynamic heights.

Hill's writing skillfully layers the instrumentation of each song, creating drama and severity in the stripped down moments, and spirited combustion in its most energetic moments.

Throughout the record, Isabel Crespo-Pardo's clean and understated yet powerful vocals beautifully interact and converse with the two saxophones that act as another speaker in the dialogue. The compositional, angular, and driving saxophone countermelodies elevate each song's meaning and intensity in an unparalleled way that sets them apart from your average “horn backgrounds.”

“Stuttered Monologue” begins as a lively song that shifts into an oscillating and urgent trio of vocals and the two saxophones. Amongst all of this restrained pandemonium is Crespo-Pardo’s unwavering voice, singing the lyrics as if they have always been timeless proverbs:
“What to say and what to mean/ Maybe words just can't be seen."

“All In One Sitting” is a stately and march-like waltz, reminiscent of composer Satie’s Gymnopedies. The opening lyrics ask:
“Did you hurt yourself when you raised your hand... all in one sitting?”,
critiquing powerful decision-makers, and asking how they can have so little thought about issues that are so large and catastrophic to people who are less powerful than them.
“In one ear and out the other, and in one ear and out the other, and in one ear and…”

“Family Tree” is an artful release filled to the brim with masterful musicianship and compositional earworms that thoughtfully coalesce into an introspective chaos.

- Lizzi Trumbore

Family Tree is a project based out of Denton, TX that blends jazz influenced music with quickly shifting rhythms and pop-like melodies.

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