Buffalo Tom - Tree House
When Buffalo Tom started, they were a Massachusetts power trio on SST Records, and their first album was produced by J Mascis, who also contributed a lead guitar track to one of the songs on the album. All of these factors made the temptation to label them “Dinosaur Jr Jr” irresistible to critics. Even at the time, when Buffalo Tom were not yet in their prime, it was a lazy comparison. Five years later, at the time of Big Red Letter Day, it was clear beyond any doubt that Buffalo Tom had their own sound that wasn’t easily compared to any one band.
“Tree House” is the sort of upbeat anthem that became one of Buffalo Tom’s signature songwriting templates, the other being the slower, more dramatic balladry of which Let Me Come Over’s “Taillights Fade” is the best example. Unlike J Mascis, who enjoyed the contrast created when he crooned softly over blasts of overdriven guitar chaos, Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz didn’t have much interest in in contrasting his melodies with anything. His upbeat songs were driven by fast, jangly strumming that evoked the same pastoral feel of country-influenced groups like Creedence Clearwater Revival and Uncle Tupelo, but contrasted that feel with melodies firmly based in pop songwriting styles. The influence of country music on Janovitz’s guitar playing is undeniable, but while his occasional solo releases dabble in elements of that genre, no country influences ever make it into Buffalo Tom’s music.
Some of that may be due to Tom Maginnis’s drumming style, which rumbles and percolates, especially in Buffalo Tom’s more upbeat moments, of which “Tree House” is definitely one. Legend has it that when Janovitz, Maginnis, and Colbourn decided to start a band, all three were guitar players, and when they couldn’t find a rhythm section, Colbourn and Maginnis agreed to switch instruments. If the legend is true, this indicates that Maginnis brought a guitar player’s sensibility to his drumming style, and that in turn may explain a sound that I found unique enough to be startling the first time I heard it. Tom Maginnis understands the way rock drumbeats are supposed to work, but it’s clear from the way he plays that he has no patience with such conventions. He keeps both hands busy at all times, hitting the snare not only at the appropriate point in each measure but at other times, tapping it lightly and quickly on offbeats to provide accents. This habit infects the way he plays the rest of his kit as well, inspiring more frequent drum fills than you might expect, as well as moments, especially on the song’s choruses, when he quickly departs from the beat in order to hit his drums in time with Janovitz’s strumming. His playing never sounds busy or overdone. Instead, it’s as if he sees the drums as just as much of a lead instrument as the guitar, and by constructing the parts he plays to fit in more closely with the guitars, he can make up for the hole that might be left in the band’s arrangement by virtue of there only being one guitarist in the band.
Maginnis’s drumming also gives songs like “Tree House” an urgent, breakneck feel, despite the fact that, even at their fastest, Buffalo Tom never gets beyond midtempo. On one level, Buffalo Tom, having come out of the late 80s Massachusetts college rock scene, are on a pretty remote branch of the post-punk family tree. Musically speaking, it’s only Maginnis’s frenetic drumming and Janovitz’s use of guitar distortion—which had become infrequent by this point in their career—that maintains their link with their roots in the post-punk American underground.
The passion that comes through in Janovitz’s vocals and lyrics, though, is another link that can’t be overlooked. While he never sings about political issues or speaks explicitly of rebellion against a mainstream society, it’s clear that the songs he sings and the way he sings them owe debts to heart-on-sleeve punk pioneers like Bob Mould and Paul Westerberg. That connection comes through on “Tree House,” which, like many of the songs on Big Red Letter Day, tells the story of a disintegrating relationship. In fact, the majority of the album has a downbeat feel musically as well as lyrically, as if Janovitz’s lyrical mood bled through into the riffs he was writing. On songs like “I’m Allowed,” “Would Not Be Denied,” and “Anything That Way,” he allowed himself to get down in the dumps about things, to wallow in heartbreak, perhaps in hope of eventually purging it from his system.
On “Tree House,” we find his attitude to be more one of resignation. The lyrics use metaphors related not just to trees but to nature in general to explain feelings of loss and hurt. As the song begins, Janovitz comes upon the object of his affection rooted in one spot. “Looks like you’re here to stay,” he says, then asks “when will you be leaving?” He recognizes that the person with whom he’s communicating has rooted herself in an unhealthy rut, and is trying to urge her to move on. But he knows it won’t work. In the second verse, he speaks of prior struggles to help her move into a healthier place. “I once held onto you so tightly,” he sings, then uses a deft bit of wordplay to express a depressing reality. “You were made of wood, and cried that no one understood, but I had splinters in my fingers.” The point of this couplet is that Janovitz has been there for this person in the past, has made clear that he was trying to understand, and to help her move beyond her own misery. But in the end, by holding on tightly, all he got was pain, and a feeling that his efforts were unappreciated. “Tears were in my eyes,” he sings passionately as the band rolls into the second chorus. “It’s no surprise.” He knew what he was getting into, as we all do when we enter those sorts of situations.
As the second chorus is drawing to an end, Janovitz plays a few lead guitar notes that lead us to expect a guitar solo. Instead, though, the band plows right into a third verse, and the urgency that his built steadily through the song keeps building. “Your mind is like a tree house, and I climb up its shaky ladder,” sings Janovitz. This seems like a metaphoric description of his attempts to save the subject of the song from her misery. But when he gets to the top of the ladder, he gets a shock. “Your bird flies with you, with claws of orange hue, and I watched you flying over my head.” I’m not sure whether the bird is intended to reference a new romantic interest, or merely the fact that the girl he’s singing to has finally freed herself from whatever rut she was in. The important point is that, in the end, she did it without him. This is when Janovitz learns the most valuable lesson to be gained from situations like this: you can’t save someone until they’re ready to be saved. They have to save themselves. All you can do is allow yourself to be pulled down with them, into their misery, which soon becomes your own. And then, when they recover from their problems, they will most likely leave you behind, feeling pain that they themselves no longer feel.
In the final chorus, Janovitz is left behind, standing in the empty tree house, screaming at the sky. “You could not care less, so you got more,” he declares, bitterness and heartbreak bleeding through his voice. “Like driftwood from the shore, you were rotten to the core.” But this kiss-off rings weak and hollow, and we all know that the person it’s intended for won’t hear it. This is the final resignation in a song about trying, failing, and finally giving up on a goal that may not have been a worthy one in the first place. As Janovitz ends the final chorus, spitting out the phrase “Rotten to the core” once again, Tom Maginnis brings his drumbeat down to a quiet tapping, and he and Chris Colbourn slowly raise the volume as Janovitz swipes at his guitar strings before finally being swept away by the buildup of the rhythm section. The three of them slam back into the verse riff and play it over and over as Janovitz howls a single phrase over and over. “Seasons change!” As with most of the other lyrics in this song, this is best understood as a metaphor. It seems to me that what he really means is “people change.” Relationships that we expect to build on and expand over the course of our lives instead disintegrate into arguments and laying of blame. Maybe we’re all better off just admitting that we’ve all got problems—whether they involve an inability to see the concern and support of others, or an unhealthy desire to fix people who really just need to fix themselves—and learning to forgive and move on.
