Patrick Sisson - Writer, Journalist, Cultural Documentarian, Music Lover

High Places: High Places

Music Review
Earplug
August 2008

highplaces

Like water trickling through outstretched fingers, the found-sound melodies of Brooklyn duo High Places suggest escape. Warm, rippling, reverb-heavy beats bump into each other, bending and bowing like waves on a pool filled with pebbles. Dropping in the wake of a scattered series of 7-inches and a compilation, the group’s self-titled debut has more cohesive rhythms and a more mystic air than its earlier work, conjuring up hazy, nameless nostalgia. The high, haunting echoes — cavernous spaces, heavy bass — mesh with singer Mary Pearson’s sunny, nursery-rhyme delivery (“I’ll buy a plot of land / One full of trees / Where I can practice taxonomy”) in the makeshift, gorgeous manner of a less austere Young Marble Giants. It’s private and playful, quiet and quirky pop that’s utterly engulfing.

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