High. are a young band from north New Jersey who make mid 1990s shoegaze.

Before we move on, let me take a moment here to discuss the band name: High. No, I am not going to criticize them for being stoners or whatever. It is the period at the end of the name that concerns me, and yes, that is an actual part of the name. I get that you need to have a unique name for copyright purposes and to prevent confusion, but, well, please take typography into consideration when you choose your name.

That period makes it difficult to write about the band High. because software treats the period as the end of a sentence, and MS Word REALLY REALLY doesn't want the next word to not be capitalized. Plus it visually disrupts the flow of reading. Admit it: in the first sentence of this paragraph, you mentally paused after the period but then had to rethink when the word "because" started with no capitalization. Using punctation like this causes unnecessary work for others.

And remember this cardinal rule of promotion: if you make work for others, there is a good chance they will just walk away rather than deal with the inconvenience.

Now, an irritating name might not matter if the music wasn't interesting, but i really like this record. High. make mid 1990s shoegaze, which is amazing considering that most of them were barely alive when that music was first made! Well, I lived through "the scene that celebrates itself" and I welcome a return of noisy guitar rock. There is a lot of this going on these days, and High. are near the front of the pack.

The vocals on this record are a lazy drawl, casual and tired in a way that reminds me of SIANspheric, Felt, or early Pale Saints. The guitars are a whirring blur like in Meeting Places, Slowdive, or Alison's Halo. The bass is a marching rhythm that drives the songs along, like Simon Raymonde in Cocteau Twins or Patrick Fitzgerald of Kitchens of Distinction. Drumming varies with the tunes, from flat like Early J&MC to loud and pounding like in A Place to Bury Strangers.

And they wrap all of that up in catchy melodies. I mean really catchy. Shoegaze was (is) a subset of pop music – not folk or blues, it's pop. The best shoegaze knew this and wrapped catchy melodies and danceable beats up in layers of feedback. And High. certainly do that.

Sometimes when I listen to this record, it doesn't seem real to me. It is the exact distillation of everything I like on about 20 or 30 records that I own. It almost feels like someone fed my record collection and concert history into some kind of AI and it spat out … this.

I do not mean to insult the band, and I really don't think that this is an AI produced album. I just think that they tapped into the past in a way that checks all the boxes for me. I am, I suppose, their target audience.

Okay, enough of that. Your takeaway so far is: new band channels 90s shoegaze, and does it well.

The album is eight tracks in about 31 minutes, so there is not a lot here. I'm not going to waste your time going through a track by track exegesis pointing out each element and what it references, so let's just examine the two best tracks.

Starting off with a bouncing bass riff courtesy of Bridget Bakie, the song Flowers positively swaggers along. Guitarists Christian Castan and Danny Zavala play in layers, chiming, and grinding, while drummer Jack Miller keeps a happy beat. Caston wails along and Bakie sings backup, Rachel to his Neil, harmonizing "flowers and table wine" as the guitars build and build, until at the end Bakie is yelling to keep up with the layers of echoing guitar. Wonderful.

The other song I really like is called Dead and lyrically Castan keeps asking, "Can you feel happiness when you are dead?", except the last word is dragged out as the guitars whine and whirr over supple bass and flat drumming reminiscent of Eyedazzler. I doubt you can feel happiness after death, but this song certainly increases net happiness.

But there isn't a bad song here and all of them are engaging in their own way. I really like all of it, and i hope this band tours the US this year. I would love to see them play in Atlanta (hint hint).

Until then, I have this record, a nigh perfect distillation of 1990's shoegaze, to warm this old music fan's bitter heart.