Perfect power pop! Hear Elephant 6, Apples In Stereo co-founder Hilarie Sidney’s unmistakable voice on “Jenny” single from “Proclaimer of Things,” out Feb. 4th.

Upcoming all-new album is second full-length in just over a year from The High Water Marks, following-up a 13-year absence from scene that Sidney helped create.
 
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The High Water Marks (L-R): Logan Miller, Hilarie Sidney, Per Ole Bratset, Øystein Megård. Photo credit: Self-Portraits, Illustration by Per Ole Bratset.
 
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The High Water Marks | “Jenny”
 

 

[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheHighWaterMarks-Jenny
 
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“Infectious hooks, crashing drums and guitars, and delicious harmonies... Punk energy... Music that is made for jumping around to.” — Glide Magazine
 
Based in her adopted home town of Grøa, Norway, Hilarie Sidney and her band The High Water Marks are prepping to release a new single “Jenny” on Sept. 24^th, the band’s first new music since the 2020 release of Ecstasy Rhymes, its first album in 13 years. Hear “Jenny” now via Glide Magazine or the links above. “Jenny” kicks off a series of singles that will culminate in another all-new album Proclaimer of Things on Feb. 4^th, 2022.
 
“That’s a song that came out super fast,” Sidney says. “I sat on the couch playing the chord progression and immediately singing, ‘Jenny’s got herself a friend and she wants to stay out late.’ Per Ole (Hilarie’s husband and band mate) said, ‘Hey, I have a chorus that suits that.’ Five minutes later, we’re playing the entire song, with almost all the lyrics.”
 
And who is Jenny?
 
“Jenny isn’t a real person,” Sidney explains. “I had heard of Jenny, but I never met her. She was known as somewhat of a legend around these parts. Everyone talks about what she did and acts as if they know her. The truth is, it’s hard to know Jenny, but I’d like to.”
 
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The High Water Marks | In The Press
 

 
“An earworm melody.” — Brooklyn Vegan
 
“Clock-stopping, pulse-raising mega-pop.” — UNCUT
 
“Complex and considered arrangements... Sugar-coated melodies to spare.” — Pitchfork
 
“Beautifully warm, catchy, high-energy... garage pop for the masses.” — PASTE
 
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The High Water Marks | About
 

 
“I am so lucky to have been a musician throughout my life,” says Hilarie Sidney, currently fronting The High Water Marks, and best known as co-founder of the revered musical collective Elephant Six, and one of its three core bands The Apples In Stereo.
 
Based in her adopted home town of Grøa, Norway, Sidney and The High Water Marks are prepping to release Proclaimer of Things, the band’s second album in just over a year, following-up the 2020 album Ecstasy Rhymes, its first album in 13 years.
 
Coming back after such a long stretch of being off the scene with a critically and commercially welcomed new album, and then quickly coming in hot with another batch of 13 songs, isn’t an accident. In this case, it’s a coping mechanism.
 
With the United States reaching a milestone of 1 in 500 people having succumbed to COVID-19, it’s tragic news that this statistic hits home for Sidney. Her mother, half a world away, passed from the virus earlier this year.
 
“Not being able to see her and knowing that she was alone, dying in a nursing home, still haunts me daily,” Sidney courageously reveals.
 
Sidney knew that when she began to build a life in Norway with her band mate and husband Per Ole Bratset and their son, that she would be just a 12-hour flight from the rest of her family, but that 12 hours became something completely different under lockdown.
 
“I never factored in a pandemic,” she says. “At least my mom got to hear our record before she passed away. That means a lot to me because she was always really supportive of my music.”
 
The thirteen songs that comprise Proclaimer of Things are just a drop in the bucket, considering how much Sidney has leaned on songwriting to take her mind off things.
 
“I feel like I can’t pick up the guitar without writing a little melody. As therapy, we decided to keep recording. We dove into the project to keep us sane, focused, and from going down the rabbit hole of depression and self-pity.”
 
Through it all, The High Water Marks made an album that is positive, light, happy, and meaningful.
 
“I think my mom would approve of my method of dealing with the grief of losing her.” Sidney says with trademark optimism.
 
Proclaimer of Things, the latest album by The High Water Marks, is scheduled for release on Feb. 4^th, 2022 on Minty Fresh.
 
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Also available now by The High Water Marks
 

The High Water Marks | “Annual Rings”
 

The music video for “Annual Rings” by The High Water Marks was co-created by University of Kentucky students, Wils Quinn and Nicholas Volosky, and produced at the school’s media space The Media Depot.
 
“We were sitting next to the radio on a spring evening in our small town,” Quinn remembers. “The next thing we heard was ‘Annual Rings’ by The High Water Marks blasting into the quiet Kentucky night. We knew right then and there that we had to become involved. You could consider it a calling or a spiritual awakening.”
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljrUSTi7p_s 
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The High Water Marks
Ecstasy Rhymes
Out Now
(Minty Fresh)
 
Streaming Link:
STREAM FULL LP
  

 
Track Listing:
01. Ode To Lieutenant Glahn
02. Annual Rings (VIDEO)
03. Can You (STREAM | VIDEO)
04. Ecstasy Rhymes
05. Award Show (STREAM)
06. Some Like It Lukewarm
07. The Trouble With Friends (STREAM | VIDEO)
08. I’ll Be Formal (With You Because of It)
09. Pepin le Bref
10. Accidentally On Purpose
11. Satellite
12. Pretending To Be Loud
 
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More about The High Water Marks
 
With The High Water Marks making many waves with new music these days, it’s worth taking a moment to remember how we probably know Sidney best.
 
During her pre-Norway years living in Denver, Colorado, Sidney became the co-founder of one of the most influential musical collectives of the past 25 years. The Elephant 6 Recording Co. is a storied group of artists and Sidney was as at its nucleus as a founding member.
 
It was a “boys club,” she confesses.
 
Indeed, Sidney was the only woman among her band The Apples In Stereo and the other two acts – Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control – that were the most visible members of Elephant 6.
 
“Having been in the Apples and on the road since 1993, I started to have many more songs than could ever be released on an Apples record, and being surrounded by a group of men for so many years, one can lose oneself,” she confides.
Sidney eventually found a new musical partnership when she formed The High Water Marks, releasing a debut album (Songs About The Ocean) in 2003. The record was written and demoed through the mail with her now-husband and band mate, Per Ole Bratset, whom she initially met at an Apples gig in Norway in 2002. A follow-up album (Polar) arrived in 2007.
 
Life as a mom led Sidney to officially leave the Apples in 2006 and to put the music business on the back burner soon after. She continued writing songs, however, and headed in a new direction by beginning to finish up a Bachelor’s degree, which led to her being awarded a prestigious study abroad scholarship at the University of Oslo.
 
“Moving to Norway was everything I had hoped it would be,” she explains.
 
Now, thirteen years after releasing her last album as The High Water Marks, the band is back with new music that reflects the maturity, perseverance, songwriting, and performing talent that made Sidney’s contributions to Elephant 6 and The Apples so integral.
 
If she was marginalized in the early days, those notions are blown out by the wealth of perfect power pop that The High Water Marks has released since, one song after another that will take any fan of the songs that Sidney contributed to Apples recordings – her voice is instantly recognizable – right back to the most potent days of that band’s career.
 
Ecstasy Rhymes” the first album by The High Water Marks in 13 years, is out now. See below to see “Annual Rings,” the latest video from Ecstasy Rhymes, and for listening links and more info about the album.
 
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The High Water Marks | Links
 
ASSETS : FACEBOOK : INSTAGRAM : SPOTIFY : APPLE : MINTY FRESH
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
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