Long Beach, California based ethereal dreamscape purveyors Highlands, are fresh from releasing, November last year, their third full-length album entitled “Wish you were”, via Etxe Records. The band, comprised of Scott Holmes (vocals, guitar), Beau Balek (bass, synths), Justin Ivey (drums), and JP Bendzinski (guitar), along 10 tracks, sharpen their song-craft and expounding on years or chasing dream-pop tones and fuzz-laden textures. The long-player deftly harkens back to the band’s previous two offerings while simultaneously expanding into new areas with propulsive grooves and celestial textures.
Sad, shimmering, slightly abrasive guitar riffs form dark eerie melodies infused with deep muted bass tones and repetitive hypnotic drumbeats, as secretive, quietly detached vocals suffer silently in meaningless anguish, soaked with humming, slowly evolving, cosmic synth swells.
Poetic lyrics describe the relationship of a young couple deeply in love who have found themselves at a crossroad that will ultimately be their last. A joint search for the meaning of life turns to a solo quest for personal responsibility as an undercurrent of tension flooded in impatience and fearful anxiety causes love to fizzle out, time to slip away, and feelings, like everything, to pass.
A montage of vintage sci-fi film clips, form an emotional canvas dramatically depicting the fatalistic nature of “Dizzy 84” combining universal themes of bad choices, no hope for the future, and the meaning of life. A riveting look at the doomed couple whose futile search to find an identity leads them down the unforeseen path toward selfish hopes and enlightenment uses superimposed imagery, assembled by Super Cut Cult, to create a mysterious and enigmatic atmosphere as glimpses of David Bowie dressed in space gear from the cult-classic “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” become an added bonus.
