The re-emergence of shoegaze has been a fascinating feat to witness. Its initial heyday trod the same space as grungy noise and an alternative rock zenith that shone best from strangeness and anti-conformity. Perhaps that’s why it fit so snugly back then; hazy soundscapes were distanced from convention. Alternative tunings, bizarre effects and unheard-of techniques overtook stylish playing. Its stars were introspective rather than portraying some sort of hero or villain and stared at their pedalboard floors through floppy mops. And in this decade where dreamlike abstract sound best reflects the uncanny real-life we’re presented with, shoegaze has returned to play as a fitting soundtrack.
Its template of feedback laden loops or churning atmosphere (rather than specific “bet you can’t play this!” riffs) makes it a versatile pantry ingredient for other palettes. Jane Remover has incorporated it bafflingly into hyperpop groundings, and bedroom indie rockers make use of its DIY basis brilliantly, as necessity and reinvention. So much so that Outbreak Festival—the UK’s premier hardcore festival—has pivoted closer to booking both legacy pioneers and newcomers that prefix their own foundations to the ‘gaze’ phrase, as in Have A Nice Life, Fleshwater, or Feeble Little Horse. Likewise, New Jersey’s latest gazers are High., a young band whose first EP was billed as making shoegaze “as blissed out as it was pissed off.” This follows on its companion piece Come Back Down; they’re less angered with their fists, instead aiming self-critical vocal rage at the difficulty of navigating life’s toughest moments.
Main songwriters Christian Castan and Bridget Bakie handle the vocal department, telling Castan’s tales of love loss and struggle that provide a personal punch through the clouded instrumentals that fill the record to the brim. The four-piece borrows from the shoegaze genre’s playbooks, owing much to their New York-adjacent heroes Diiv on opener In A Hole—a love letter to friends that provide sanctuary and belonging—that shatters dreamy sounds through lyrics greatly tied to the earthly experience. For a group supposedly formed after a “prank rehearsal” it introduces their interconnected chemistry, best represented in the track’s final moments featuring a synthlike lead from Danny Zavala that buzzes over a structure built and solidified over its course.
Come Back Down, billed as an EP, does suffer slightly from the shoegaze curse: each track, while not audibly collected as a single unit, does play on a similar trope of being lost in the fog, lyrically and musically. Castan and Bakie’s doubled vocals grant a characteristic signature to Catcher, while George’s plodding drums and siren sounds elevate its largely ominous tone that battles with stark religious imagery. It’s smaller moments like this prick the ears, also including Dead’s chorus seeing Castan’s vocal running free with its main riff. There’s a Peter Hook-like bassline to Flowers, and Jack Miller’s rolling snares on Painbox slap momentum against lackadaisical verses. When that throttling or punchier low end takes hold, magic stems forth, particularly given Bakie’s known epithet as Jersey’s “Queen of the Quarter Note”
The pick-pocketing of outside influence has given this musical style a nearly timeless appeal since its introduction. High. certainly purvey tight, synchronised packages that’s warm and chilling when the song suits; it’s through adding some additional flair to that inherent shoegaze feeling that pushes the boundaries the genre is calling out for. With a full-length hopefully brewing in future, that’s a realm a burgeoning dialled-in band like High. can no doubt achieve.
For fans of: Fleshwater, Slowdive, Hotline TNT
‘Come Back Down’ by High. is released on 24th January.
Words by Elliot Burr
