High Highs aim to please, soothe and caress on their dreamy debut album, Open Season. In terms of which season they’re covering, they keep their options open. Summer ends in the melancholic Milan, while spring is the setting for Flowers Bloom. Some songs drift along on the carefree strum of summer, others bear the tired, beaten burden of winter.
The album floats along on a timeless wash of pretty strumming and soft pulsating synth tones, but the moments captured feel still, the protagonists frozen by ennui against their picturesque backdrop. “So I pick up the phone and I’ll never hang it up,” Jack Milas sighs in Phone Call, while Slow It Down slows things to a crawl, shut in darkness behind locked doors. On a couple of songs the subject is living “like a kite”, a submissive drifter who is pushed and pulled by the elements, but unable to act for themselves.
One of Open Season’s strengths is its consistency, but the highest of the highs are captured early in the album. After a delicate instrumental intro, the run of Flowers Bloom, White Walls and Open Season is hard to fault, though In A Dream, from the album’s second half, sits on that same cloud. The songs are set in a studied style, one that’s incredibly accomplished for a debut album, but it’s a sound softened by a heart-tugging emotiveness. It’s a beautifully calming relaxant to the chaos of everyday life.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
Best Track: Open Season
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: Gemini WILD NOTHING, Heaven Or Las Vegas COCTEAU TWINS, Great Barrier Grief OH MERCY
In A Word: Lush
