Dragging the Past for Pearls

An occasional series of looking at albums that may have been lost to the dense fogs of history.

The High - Somewhere Soon (1990)
Found, if I remember right, about ten years ago for £2.99 in a "reduced" basket in a record store whose name I can't remember in Aldershot shopping centre. I also got Giant Steps by the Bood Radleys on cassette for a pound. Bargain!

If the High are remembered at all, it may be because they were one of the last bands Martin Hannett worked with, on their single Box Set Go, which is the opening track here. Not that it's a classic Hannett production by any means - it's a perfectly upbeat indie-jangle affair - but the name on the credits is perhaps enough to secure kudos. Apparently, Hannett was set to do the whole album, but the health problems that would led to his death meant otherwise.

At the time, the High were lumped in with the whole 'Madchester' scene of the time, not helped by being from Manchester and picking a bandname with drug connections. Also, with the Stone Roses at their peak, it perhaps did them no favours in terms of journalistic reporting that they had a guitarist in Andy Couzens who used to be in the Stone Roses, appearing on their debut single So Young and aborted 1985 sessions (also produced by Hannett) that would appear much later as Garage Flower.

All that aside, the High were an ill-fit into the pigeon hole they were put, seeing as there was very little (if any) dance music influence in their sound. Couzens' guitar mainly went down the Byrds route, with occasional detours into rocking out (Dreams of Dinesh). The album occasional suffers from a lack of variety in the pace front, and John Matthews' vocals tend to never stray from safety, but at their best, when they're putting together appealing atmospherics, it's a very good sound. The final two tracks of P.W.A. and Somewhere Soon make for an excellent conclusion.

Signed to London Records, the inital signs seemed good for the High when Box Set Go cracked the top 30. However, these were the days when any set of ambulance chasers with a tenuous connection to Manchester could get a hit. The album stalled at #59 on the charts and by the time of 1992's follow up Hype, the backlash was in full effect with the media now wowed by the likes of Cobain and chums.

Forgotten then, perhaps, but certainly unfairly. If it had been released perhaps a few years either side of 1990, Somewhere Soon might have been able to stand on it's own merits more. Worth tracking down for anyone a fan of well-put together indie pop music.