DUSTED MAGAZINE

Dusted Reviews

High Places - 03.07 - 09.07

today features
reviews charts
labels writers
info donate

Search by Artist



Sign up here to receive weekly updates from Dusted


email address

Recent Reviews

Dusted Reviews


Artist: High Places

Album: 03.07 - 09.07

Label: Thrill Jockey

Review date: Jul. 28, 2008


Brooklyn vox-and-keyboard...type...stuff duo High Places’ singles comp 03/07 -09/07 might prove the best record of the summer. It's not the kind to blast from a car stereo, but the sort that perfectly complements an afternoon lazing at the beach or sunbathing on the roof. They sing about sand and oceans; they build songs from burbling sounds, steel drum-like instrumental accompaniment, and percussion that sounds like clinking seashells.

That’s not all that imbues High Places’ songs with the gentle, wistful mood of a late summer day, though. Rob Barber’s beats are consistently toe-tapping, if not persuasively danceable. They’ll trail off into, or fade in from, washes of Casio noise. Mary Pearson’s vocals function similarly, modulating in volume, her melodies disappearing into the end of a song or manifesting somewhere from within the beats. Would it be pushing a metaphor too hard to call this texturing “tidal?”

Cynical listeners might shudder and beat a retreat to the nearest basement. Indeed, High Places risk cutesiness: they’re from Brooklyn, they play (well, until recent Pitchfork Fest-scale appearances) D.I.Y. shows to which they haul their own P.A., Mary Pearson has a pretty little voice and good elocution, and their lyrical content extends oh-so-whimsically to "Martians" and "cats." Unlike some of their sweetie-pie, willfully experimental peers, though, High Places’ songs hold together as songs rather than mere fragments. The layers that comprise each song - beats, vocals, keyboards, whatever household utensil noises they sample - mesh together to form a whole, rather than seeming piecemeal. Pearson's vocals work strikingly well; one can hardly think of them as "lead vocals," as they're integrated thoroughly into the mix, no more or less prominent than beats or instrumentation. Although they use a wide variety of instruments and samples, nothing ever sticks out as illogical. High Places don't try too hard to summon a certain influence, or to force a glockenspiel into a song in which a glockenspiel wouldn’t make sense.

High Places’ songs sound so consistent on this collection, in fact, that one hopes they’ll shake things up a little bit on their impending debut album. For a neophyte, it’s hard to imagine this as a "singles" compilation. Each song seems a logical move from the song that preceded it, and no track stands out particularly from the rest. As a distinctive sound, though, as a warm, pulsing vibe, they succeed.

By Talya Cooper

Other Reviews of High Places

High Places

High Places Vs. Mankind

Original Colors

Read More

View all articles by Talya Cooper

Find out more about Thrill Jockey

©2002-2011 Dusted Magazine. All Rights Reserved.