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 Experimental pop duo HIGH PLACES have rapidly scaled the ladder of the indie pantheon in the last year or so. MARY PEARSON talks to MICHAEL PINCOTT about ‘exquisite corpse’ songwriting and the joys of touring.
The music of High Places is dreamy, playful and innocent. Pearson’s voice, simple and endearing, forms a fabric with the ambiguous sounds and syncopated percussion of partner in crime Rob Barber. The instrumentation mixes organic with electronic, seamlessly blurring the borders between the two. The percussion especially stands out, with Pearson’s voice the final glue to bind it all together. The combination clearly works, with both their self titled of last year and 03/07-09/07 (a release gathering loose ends) receiving warm critical reception. On top of that High Places have toured relentlessly since their inception, not that Pearson is complaining.
"It’s pretty nice, the other day I was thinking, ‘It’s so cool that I get to go out and do shows every night.’ I forget to be grateful for that. To be able to write songs and perform them and pay your rent with that, to get to travel and go to new places is amazing."
Having recently broken into the shiny new year of 2009, I ask Pearson whether she formed any New Year’s resolutions.
"I tend to make resolutions on my birthday or when we get off tour. Usually on the road you think about all the things you want to do when you get home. My current resolution is about all the things I want to cook when I get home. I don’t always eat that great on tour. I’m thinking about making vegetable stock when I get home so I can make a bunch of soup."
Another challenge of being on the road is working on new material in a less than ideal setting, an alien motel room or cramped van. But it’s a situation Pearson and Barber are coming to terms with.
"We’re still trying to figure it out. It’s always tricky to have any degree of normalcy in your life when you’re on tour. I’ve started making video stuff on the road and we’re slowly learning how to work on music on the road too. When we were home in January we finished up a recording for a split twelve-inch with Soft Circle. We’ll be back home in a couple of months for a break and we’ll start working on our new record then."
High Places’ creative process has been described previously by the band as ‘exquisite corpse’ songwriting. Not entirely sure what to make of the phrase, I ask Pearson to expand on their songwriting philosophy.
"The idea behind High Places is that we both make visual art and music, so the way we approach making music is visual in a way; we think a lot about colours and textures. The exquisite corpse idea is that we trade ideas back and forth, always throwing the other person for a loop with what we come up with. I think we’re such different people that we approach everything from a different perspective. I’ll hear something Rob has done and change it in a way he didn’t see coming and so at the end of the day we have this recording that’s a total surprise, it doesn’t really sound like either one of us."
HIGH PLACES play Summer Tones at The Zoo on Friday Mar 6, alongside Dan Deacon, The Ruby Suns, Beaches and Lawrence Arabia. HIGH PLACES and 03/07-09/07 are both out now through Mistletone. Check out www.myspace.com/hellohighplaces for more information.
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