Friday, October 29, 2021

Don’t deny “an irresistible power pop gem.” Check out “Proclaimer of Things” title track from upcoming new album by The High Water Marks.

 Norway + Kentucky-based band knows what it’s doing: Leader Hilarie Sidney co-founded one of music history’s most perfect pop collectives.
 
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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.
 
+++
 
 
The High Water Marks | “Proclaimer of Things”
  

[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheHighWaterMarks-Proclaimer-Single
 
The press calls The High Water Marks “pulse-raising mega-pop,” (UNCUT), with “sugar-coated melodies to spare” (Pitchfork), that offers “garage pop for the masses” (Paste), and now Under The Radar rings in with the premiere of the title track of the band’s upcoming new album, calling “Proclaimer of Things,” “an irresistible power pop gem.”
 
The upcoming Proclaimer of Things album is the second full-length in just over a year from The High Water Marks, following a (too long!) 13-year hiatus.
 
The Grøa, Norway and Lexington, Kentucky-based band fronted by Hilarie Sidney, the co-founder of the Elephant 6 Recording Co. and one of its core bands The Apples In Stereo, maintains and extends the high-energy fantastic fuzz of those sounds. The “Proclaimer of Things” single, featuring lead vocal by Sidney’s bandmate and husband, Per Ole Bratset (along with a boyhood photo of Sidney’s great grandfather on the cover!) is out today. The full 13-song album arrives Feb. 4th, 2022 via Minty Fresh.
 
Bratset says, “The title comes from an inside joke Hil and I always play around with. If we catch ourselves being a little preachy or pompous, we add ‘I am the proclaimer of things!’ at the end. We picture this guy with a crazy mustache and top hat going around ‘proclaiming things,’ while holding up a scroll and wearing a monocle. It always makes it weird and hilarious!”
 
Sidney elaborates on the appearance of her great grandfather on the cover of the single, saying, “His dad owned a roller rink in the 1880s in Iowa. My great-grandpa was so good at skating and doing tricks on both the bike and the skates that he started performing around the Midwest, and as far west as Colorado. He earned an insanely good chunk of cash for doing this, thus supporting the family. He went under the moniker, Little Willy Sidney, and Wee Willy Sidney, hahaha.”
 
+++
 

Hilarie Sidney from The High Water Marks chats about the band’s upcoming album as well as her Elephant 6 and Apples In Stereo history in Denver with the city’s own Westword. Check it out and feel a mile high!
  
+++
 
The High Water Marks | “Jenny”
 


[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSzPT8Xdc3M
 
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheHighWaterMarks-Jenny
 
+++
 
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. 4th, 2022 on Minty Fresh.
 
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The High Water Marks | Links
 
ASSETS : FACEBOOK : INSTAGRAM : SPOTIFY : APPLE : MINTY FRESH
 
+++
 
Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Sunday, October 24, 2021

“Amazing. Be sure to get more of her in your life,” says folk music authority Folk Radio UK of Jenny Parrott’s “Georgica” single, out today.

“A prayer and call for hope for young female energy,” song is from upcoming follow-up to Parrott’s “Top 10 of The Year” (Austin Chronicle) debut.
 
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Jenny Parrott as photographed by Carrie Jane Fink. Design by Catfish.
 
+++
 
PLAY, POST & SHARE
 
Jenny Parrott | “Georgica”
 
 

[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/JennyParrott-Georgica
 
+++
 
“American icon Kinky Friedman has been quoted as saying Jenny Parrott’s tunes are ‘the best songs I’ve heard since Christ was a cowboy!’ That statement isn’t going to wear out too soon. There is nothing to not like about Jenny Parrott, be sure to get more of her in your life. ‘Georgica’ is also our Song of the Day.” Check out Folk Radio UK’s premiere coverage of “Georgica” by Jenny Parrott here or listen at the links above.
 
 ‘Georgica’ is the name of my hometown friend's little girl,” Parrott says. “Her mother – the Grandma – asked me to write a song as a gift to her. We aren’t especially in touch anymore – I live very far away – but the song has a vibe of sending warm, maternal, motherly well-wishes through time and space from an older source to a younger one, with the understanding that there's birth and death, and hopefully a whole lot of nice stuff in-between.
 
It’s almost like a prayer and call for hope for young female energy. When I think about this song, I almost feel like I'm up in space, singing to the planet.”
 
+++
 
Jenny Parrott
The Fire I Saw
(Parking Lot Panic Attack)
Nov 12th, 2021
 

Track Listing:
 
01. Knockin’ Back Some Cokes (STREAM)
02. My Hero
03. I Thought (STREAM)
04. Say It
05. Georgica (STREAM)
06. Hallelujah
07. July
08. The Fire I Saw (Is There Anyone To Meet Me?)
 
+++
 
Jenny Parrott | About
 

Jenny Parrott’s 2017 solo debut When I Come Down was named one of the Austin Chronicle’s Top 10 albums of that year. Her follow-up full-length The Fire I Saw arrives on Nov. 12th, 2021.
 
The new album is, naturally, an evolution of Parrott’s seemingly effortless lyricism, humor mixed with despair, and ultimately, her economic use of unforgettable melodies and just-right instrumentation that makes you feel like she’s seeing you even more than she’s seeing herself.
 
“These arms can’t stand an ever loving man. And these eyes can’t see a never changing me.”
 
The opening lines of first single “I Thought” stop you dead in your tracks. A perfect example of what Parrott does over the course of an album that doesn’t even clock in past 25 minutes and doesn’t need to. Parrott takes care of all business during the brief span of the eight songs on The Fire I Saw, in a way many songwriters work an entire career towards and never reach.
 
The album was originally going to be a more standard-length release, but the pandemic changed up Parrott’s plans.
 
“I had to give the album a makeover because I was planning on having all my buds come over and finish it in the home studio. Most of my friends in Austin are rootsy-type players, so it would have had that feel. But I was stuck at home in a damp cul-de-sac, and I was scared of the virus, and didn’t want anyone in my space,” she explains.
 
Teaching herself Logic, and putting her Roland Juno into overdrive, Parrott spent time testing and tweaking her favorite synth patches until she had whittled the album down to the “eight that I felt were okay.”
 
Some may say, the eight are more than “okay.”
 
American icon, Kinky Friedman has been quoted as saying Parrott’s tunes are “the best songs I’ve heard since Christ was a cowboy!,” which, it can be argued, is a more interesting string of words than anything Kinky could have actually been talking about, but we get the idea!
 
Parrott has played prisons, a Black Panther reunion party, children’s shows, on streets all over the world, and in every basement from here to New York. She has opened for Jonathan Richman, Pokey LaFarge, and Delbert McClinton. These aren’t mere credits, they are experiences that you should rightfully expect inform Parrott’s songs.
 
And not all of the experiences need to be so flashy. Mundane works just fine, too.
 
Parrott describes the album track “July” as being “written while taking out the garbage in Macon, Georgia” and opener “Knockin’ Back Some Cokes” as “a play on how Sam Cooke is always singing about Coke and popcorn and cake and ice cream,” although she goes on to rightly remark that her take contains “sinister lyrics about facing down climate change and the apocalypse.”
 
Similarly stark is the previously mentioned, “I Thought,” which, while taking Parrott’s stock of her ability to love and be loved, was “written as a response to an abusive relationship at a time in my life where I swore I’d cut out people with violence in their repertoire.”
 
“A lot of the songs are about life, death, and faith,” she says. “Like, having enough faith to wonder about your child’s future in ‘Georgica,’” she explains, referring to another of the album’s upcoming singles, which was written for a hometown friend that Parrott used to sing with.
 
“I am trying to be myself with the songs and performances, instead of putting out a record with the right number of happy-sounding songs on it,” she says. “You don’t have to use a dude’s guitar part to spare his feelings! That will only dim the fire within you that you saw, and you’ve got to feed it.”
 
The Fire I Saw, the second solo album by Jenny Parrott, arrives on Nov. 12th, 2021, preceded by the singles “I Thought” and “Georgica”.
 
Jenny Parrott is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
 
+++
 
Jenny Parrott | Links
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : BANDCAMP : SPOTIFY : APPLE
 
+++
 
Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Friday, October 22, 2021

The Nervous Hex crashes into existence with “Wash” from upcoming debut; RIYL: Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500, Yo La Tengo, The Feelies.

Track leads off bi-coastal trio’s self-titled EP – mixed by Joe McGrath (Morrissey, Green Day, Velocity Girl) – out Nov. 5th via Dead Stare.
 
+++

 
The Nervous Hex (L-R): Ryan Traster, Corey Zaloom, Dylan Schultz. Photo credit: The Nervous Hex
 
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The Nervous Hex | “Wash”
 

[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1OEd_8FENQ
 
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheNervousHex-Wash
 
+++
 
“Revolution lies behind your eyes. / Stop looking towards the sky.”
 
“Sonically,  I was in a deep Shoegaze rabbit hole for this one,” says Ryan Traster of The Nervous Hex about “Wash.” “It was during a particularly rainy winter in Portland, and I was messing around with a lot of textures and weirdo tunings and stuff.
 
“Lyrically, I wanted to explore the idea of looking inward to spark revolution, whether that be a personal revolution, cultural revolution, or both. Side-stepping the notion that there is going to be a savior that swoops in and really changes things.”

+++
 
The Nervous Hex
S/T EP
Nov. 5th, 2021
(Dead Stare)
  
 
Track Listing:
01.Wash (VIDEO | STREAM)
02.Ghosting
03.The Avenues
04.Positive Feedback Loop
 
+++
 
The Nervous Hex | About
 

Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth said that Today by Galaxie 500 was ‘the guitar album of 1988,’” explains Ryan Traster of The Nervous Hex. “It made me want to take a stab at making the second best guitar album of 1988.”
 
The Nervous Hex will release the first rumblings of this worthwhile endeavor on Nov. 5th with its self-titled four-song debut EP via Dead Stare. Hear the lead track “Wash” now.
 
Based on both coasts – Traster (Guitar/Vocals) is in Southern California, Corey Zaloom (Bass, Vocals) and Dylan Schultz (Guitar, Vocals) are in Brooklyn – The Nervous Hex brings together three successful longtime DIY-ers.
 
Traster has numerous solo albums album to his credit, in addition to his stint with Midwestern Emo heroes Small Towns Burn A Little Slower (Triple Crown / Rise Records), and Zaloom and Schultz have variously performed with artists such as A Bunch of Dead People, Swampboots, Riverwild, Galaxy Queens, and Tourmaline.
 
The members of The Nervous Hex are also old friends and former bandmates, reconvening in a new formation to find a new sound. Along with the pursuit of 1988’s guitar album silver medal per the Thurston / Galaxie quote above, the songs on “The Nervous Hex EP” also give off potent late 80s / early 90s, Hoboken / Yo La Tengo / Feelies vibes.
 
Or, as the band’s mix engineer Joe McGrath (Morrissey, Green Day, Velocity Girl) viscerally describes, “It feels like I missed the last PATH train, so I had to sleep in the Hoboken terminal.”
 
Despite the distance, “The Nervous Hex EP” is meant to “announce this band into existence,” according to Traster, as the trio is already working on new music and plans for touring in 2022.
 
The self-titled debut EP by The Nervous Hex is scheduled for release on Nov. 5th, 2021 on Dead Stare.
 
+++
 
The Nervous Hex | Links
 
INSTAGRAM : BANDCAMP : DEAD STARE
 
+++
 
Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Jenny Parrott to follow-up solo debut – named a “Top 10 Album of The Year” by Austin Chronicle – with searing “The Fire I Saw” on Nov. 12th.

A vocal survivor of trauma, Parrott wrote “I Thought” single “as a response to an abusive relationship when I swore I’d cut out violent people.”
 
+++

 
Jenny Parrott as photographed by Carrie Jane Fink. Design by Catfish.
 
+++
 
PLAY, POST & SHARE
 
Jenny Parrott | “I Thought”
 
 

 
+++
 
“These arms can’t stand an ever lovin’ man / These eyes can’t see a never changin’ me”
 
The lyrics are taken from “‘I Thought,’ the first single from Jenny Parrott’s upcoming album The Fire I Saw. Check out the premiere coverage at Americana Highways and Americana UK.
 
“It was written as a response to an abusive relationship at a time in my life where I swore I’d cut out people with violence in their repertoire,” Parrott says. “It’s about when your first instincts to love, to cherish, and to give your all, later turn out to be incorrect.”
 
 She continues, “The fearful realization that maybe you just ‘loved’ that way with such intensity because you’re repeating some old, broken pattern of childhood violence.
 
“I grew up with a violent childhood and am a trauma survivor. While I have healed a lot, and have a big capacity for love, I still sometimes make the wrong choices and love people who are abusive. I suspect that as I age, my radar will get sharper and sharper, but I still make mistakes.”
 
+++
 
Jenny Parrott
The Fire I Saw
(Parking Lot Panic Attack)
Nov 12th, 2021
  

Track Listing:
 
01. Knockin’ Back Some Cokes (STREAM)
02. My Hero
03. I Thought (STREAM)
04. Say It
05. Georgica
06. Hallelujah
07. July
08. The Fire I Saw (Is There Anyone To Meet Me?)
 
+++
 
Jenny Parrott | About
 

 Jenny Parrott’s 2017 solo debut When I Come Down was named one of the Austin Chronicle’s Top 10 albums of that year. Her follow-up full-length The Fire I Saw arrives on Nov. 12th, 2021.
 
The new album is, naturally, an evolution of Parrott’s seemingly effortless lyricism, humor mixed with despair, and ultimately, her economic use of unforgettable melodies and just-right instrumentation that makes you feel like she’s seeing you even more than she’s seeing herself.
 
“These arms can’t stand an ever loving man. And these eyes can’t see a never changing me.”
 
The opening lines of first single “I Thought” stop you dead in your tracks. A perfect example of what Parrott does over the course of an album that doesn’t even clock in past 25 minutes and doesn’t need to. Parrott takes care of all business during the brief span of the eight songs on The Fire I Saw, in a way many songwriters work an entire career towards and never reach.
 
The album was originally going to be a more standard-length release, but the pandemic changed up Parrott’s plans.
 
“I had to give the album a makeover because I was planning on having all my buds come over and finish it in the home studio. Most of my friends in Austin are rootsy-type players, so it would have had that feel. But I was stuck at home in a damp cul-de-sac, and I was scared of the virus, and didn’t want anyone in my space,” she explains.
 
Teaching herself Logic, and putting her Roland Juno into overdrive, Parrott spent time testing and tweaking her favorite synth patches until she had whittled the album down to the “eight that I felt were okay.”
 
Some may say, the eight are more than “okay.”
 
American icon, Kinky Friedman has been quoted as saying Parrott’s tunes are “the best songs I’ve heard since Christ was a cowboy!,” which, it can be argued, is a more interesting string of words than anything Kinky could have actually been talking about, but we get the idea!
 
Parrott has played prisons, a Black Panther reunion party, children’s shows, on streets all over the world, and in every basement from here to New York. She has opened for Jonathan Richman, Pokey LaFarge, and Delbert McClinton. These aren’t mere credits, they are experiences that you should rightfully expect inform Parrott’s songs.
 
And not all of the experiences need to be so flashy. Mundane works just fine, too.
 
Parrott describes the album track “July” as being “written while taking out the garbage in Macon, Georgia” and opener “Knockin’ Back Some Cokes” as “a play on how Sam Cooke is always singing about Coke and popcorn and cake and ice cream,” although she goes on to rightly remark that her take contains “sinister lyrics about facing down climate change and the apocalypse.”
 
Similarly stark is the previously mentioned, “I Thought,” which, while taking Parrott’s stock of her ability to love and be loved, was “written as a response to an abusive relationship at a time in my life where I swore I’d cut out people with violence in their repertoire.”
 
“A lot of the songs are about life, death, and faith,” she says. “Like, having enough faith to wonder about your child’s future in ‘Georgica,’” she explains, referring to another of the album’s upcoming singles, which was written for a hometown friend that Parrott used to sing with.
 
“I am trying to be myself with the songs and performances, instead of putting out a record with the right number of happy-sounding songs on it,” she says. “You don’t have to use a dude’s guitar part to spare his feelings! That will only dim the fire within you that you saw, and you’ve got to feed it.”
 
The Fire I Saw, the second solo album by Jenny Parrott, arrives on Nov. 12th, 2021, preceded by the singles “I Thought” (Out Now) and “Georgica” (Oct. 21).
 
Jenny Parrott is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
 
+++
 
Jenny Parrott | Links
 
 
+++
 
Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 

Friday, October 15, 2021

The Nervous Hex takes a stab at making 1988’s second-best guitar record with upcoming debut EP, out Nov. 5th via Dead Stare.

Bi-coastal-based trio will please fans of Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500, Yo La Tengo, Feelies; Let lead track “Wash” over you now.
 
+++


The Nervous Hex (L-R): Ryan Traster, Corey Zaloom, Dylan Schultz. Photo credit: The Nervous Hex
 
+++
 
The Nervous Hex | “Wash”
  

[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1OEd_8FENQ
 
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheNervousHex-Wash
 
+++
 
“Revolution lies behind your eyes. / Stop looking towards the sky.”
 
“Sonically, I was in a deep Shoegaze rabbit hole for this one,” says Ryan Traster of The Nervous Hex about “Wash.” “It was during a particularly rainy winter in Portland, and I was messing around with a lot of textures and weirdo tunings and stuff.
 
“Lyrically, I wanted to explore the idea of looking inward to spark revolution, whether that be a personal revolution, cultural revolution, or both. Side-stepping the notion that there is going to be a savior that swoops in and really changes things.”
 
+++

The Nervous Hex
S/T EP
Nov. 5th, 2021
(Dead Stare)
  
 
Track Listing:
01.Wash (VIDEO | STREAM)
02.Ghosting
03.The Avenues
04.Positive Feedback Loop
 
+++
 
The Nervous Hex | About
 

Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth said that Today by Galaxie 500 was ‘the guitar album of 1988,’” explains Ryan Traster of The Nervous Hex. “It made me want to take a stab at making the second best guitar album of 1988.”
 
The Nervous Hex will release the first rumblings of this worthwhile endeavor on Nov. 5th with its self-titled four-song debut EP via Dead Stare. Hear the lead track “Wash” now.
 
Based on both coasts – Traster (Guitar/Vocals) is in Southern California, Corey Zaloom (Bass, Vocals) and Dylan Schultz (Guitar, Vocals) are in Brooklyn – The Nervous Hex brings together three successful longtime DIY-ers.
 
Traster has numerous solo albums album to his credit, in addition to his stint with Midwestern Emo heroes Small Towns Burn A Little Slower (Triple Crown / Rise Records), and Zaloom and Schultz have variously performed with artists such as A Bunch of Dead People, Swampboots, Riverwild, Galaxy Queens, and Tourmaline.
 
The members of The Nervous Hex are also old friends and former bandmates, reconvening in a new formation to find a new sound. Along with the pursuit of 1988’s guitar album silver medal per the Thurston / Galaxie quote above, the songs on “The Nervous Hex EP” also give off potent late 80s / early 90s, Hoboken / Yo La Tengo / Feelies vibes.
 
Or, as the band’s mix engineer Joe McGrath (Morrissey, Green Day, Velocity Girl) viscerally describes, “It feels like I missed the last PATH train, so I had to sleep in the Hoboken terminal.”
 
Despite the distance, “The Nervous Hex EP” is meant to “announce this band into existence,” according to Traster, as the trio is already working on new music and plans for touring in 2022.
 
The debut self-titled EP by The Nervous Hex is scheduled for release on Nov. 5th, 2021 on Dead Stare.
 
+++
 
The Nervous Hex | Links
 
INSTAGRAM : BANDCAMP : DEAD STARE
 
+++
 
Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Black Flag is popular with power pop bands. The High Water Marks leader Hilarie Sidney wears love on her sleeve (literally) in “Jenny” video.

 Tune is first single off of upcoming “Proclaimer of Things” album by Elephant 6, Apples In Stereo co-founder’s Grøa, Norway-based foursome.
 
+++


The High Water Marks (L-R): Logan Miller, Hilarie Sidney, Per Ole Bratset, Øystein Megård.
 
Photo credit: Self-Portraits, Illustration by Per Ole Bratset.
 
+++
 
The High Water Marks | “Jenny”
 


[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSzPT8Xdc3M
 
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheHighWaterMarks-Jenny
 
+++


“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 have just released “Jenny,” the band’s first new music since the 2020 release of Ecstasy Rhymes, its first album in 13 years. Check out “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. 4th, 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.”
 
+++
 

Hilarie Sidney from The High Water Marks chats about the band’s upcoming album as well as her Elephant 6 and Apples In Stereo history in Denver with the city’s own Westword. Check it out and feel a mile high!

 

+++


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. 4th, 2022 on Minty Fresh.
 
+++
 
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
 
+++
 
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
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
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