Send "High Places " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Adequacy |
 With such a lush, rich, intricate and distinct sound being so well defined across early singles and 2008’s eponymous debut LP, the most obvious hazard for Rob Barber and Mary Pearson trading under the name of High Places could have been to lapse lazily into repetitious formula. Thankfully, it’s something the duo conscientiously avoid doing with this second proper album. Building on the two brilliant between-albums tracks released last year – the digital-only single “I Was Born” and the epic split-12” piece “Late Bloomer” – Barber and Pearson have found a way to widen their sonic reach whilst adding a more magnified sense of focus. Throughout High Places vs. Mankind the two further unravel as well as expand their influences and open-up their compact electronic world to include more live instrumentation and more upfront organic vocals. Therefore, this sophomore set divides itself broadly between deeper experimental cuts and more direct art-pop nuggets. In the latter body of tracks, there are some truly deliciously melodic hook-sinkers. The sublime “On Giving Up” could be a dream collaboration between Four Tet, mid-’80s New Order and Vanishing Point-era Primal Scream, with Pearson’s childlike vocals finally pushed confidently to the fore. Elsewhere, the cherishable “Constant Winter” chimes and rumbles with a beatific middle-eastern shimmer laced with a dreamy Hacienda club haze. “On A Hill In A Bed On A Road In A House” takes the twosome’s twee-pop streak into a more mature direction, worthy of cross-referencing with latter-day Animal Collective. “The Most Beautiful Name” even makes a leftward stab at dub-reggae without tripping-up on a pile of borrowed Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry 45s....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| High Places were always something of an anomaly in the Brooklyn scene. If music and art is intrinsically linked to the environment in which it is made, Rob Barber and Mary Pearson took one look at their surroundings and veered in the polar opposite direction. They appeared to be using their bucolic take on electronic music as a means of primitive escapism, as a way of wiping the grime of New York from their faces, to disappear for an hour or so into songs flooded with a rustic, agrarian light that you could never find in the city. So it’s not a great surprise to discover that Barber and Pearson went wandering after enjoying a fairly relentless couple of years touring and recording. They ultimately ended up in the permanently sun-dappled surroundings of Los Angeles, another city where this music doesn’t quite fit, but at least has greater ties to their thematic fascination with the natural world than their last abode. But their desire to avoid replication, to subtly turn away from territory already covered while also retaining certain traits that make this music identifiable as High Places, has caused them to divert from such lyrical allegories and start afresh. Instead, High Places vs. Mankind dwells on bigger subjects, such as addiction (‘On Giving Up’) and death (‘When It Comes’). The most recognisable musical difference between this album and their self-titled debut is that it’s less reliant on the clattering percussion of yore. In its place comes a swathe of processed guitar, which often creates dense levels of sound when matched with the odd samples and pieces of electronic noise that are worked into the mix. In contrast, early songs such as ‘Head Spins’ and ‘Jump In’ now sound positively sparse in comparison. There’s also a greater preponderance for overt pop here—it’s not inconceivable that the beautifully serene opener ‘The Longest Shadows’, which is built on the back of a sputtering sample of wheezy electronic noise, could significantly expand their audience if put in the right hands....full text |
| Prefixmag |
| Though they know their way around a percussive groove, you would never confuse what High Places do with anything resembling dance music. The sound sketches of their early singles and self-titled debut were always too temporary, even for dance music; they were built from scratch with found sounds and brought to a climax in a brief amount of time. But now here comes High Places vs. Mankind, their sophomore album, which could easily end up in the dance music section of your iTunes. All it took was slightly increased fidelity (at least in music; lead singer Mary Pearson still sounds as if she’s in the cave of oddities in The Little Mermaid) and a faster BPM and now High Places are all shimmery beats, sultry dance vocals, and undeniable force. It seems impossible that the same band that started out so ramshackle could deliver an album as splendid and tighly wound as this. Vs. Mankind opens with “The Longest Shadows.” In the opening stanzas, it sounds as if it’s building toward the vaguely tropical squiggles that High Places tend to float by on, but then a glittery guitar line locks step with the drums and the song takes off around its totemic beat. The sinister death disco of “On Giving Up” picks up the mood next, hanging heavy like morning fog and moving forward like an irrepressible foe. Closer “When It Comes,” a song concerned with deciding if we’ve become to aberrant, is the best synthesis of the more placid High Places with their dance sensibilities. Sound sculptor Rob Barber crafts an army of stick drummers over a beat that sounds as if it were lifted from the soundtrack for the blue guys in Avatar; Pearson does her best jock-jams vocals while the song soars into the stratosphere. ...full text |
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