High Vis
Guided Tour
Release Date: Oct 18, 2024
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: Dais
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy Guided Tour from Amazon
Album Review: Guided Tour by High Vis
Very Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
The ascension of High Vis has been slow burning, yet fiercely gathering momentum over the past 18 months, mainly since their second album, Blending, dropped in 2022. Molding together elements of post-punk, noise, shoegaze, and rabble-rousing choruses sat somewhere between the terrace Oi! of Cockney Rejects and the anthemic Britpop of Oasis, High Vis are an unconventional yet insatiable quandary. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that high hopes have been leveled on their third long player, Guided Tour.
Based on rating 6/10
Post-punk in particular has had a roaring resurgence in the past couple of years, but many of the contemporary bands associated with that moniker are so different, so out there that narrowly defining them in this way has gotten very boring. While the early 2000s' "post-punk revival" featured a lot of drugged up New York bands playing a seedy (NOT sleazy) brand of indie-drenched cool, none of those bands sounded the same either: only their 2020's copycats do. Now, twenty-some-odd years later, a new crop of posters has popped up, with many of the most well-known acts coming from the semi-birthplace of all things post-, the UK.
Opinion: Excellent
The retro fadeout in High Vis' opening title track perfectly captures the zeitgeist of their third album, one that pairs Britpop swagger with traditional hardcore fury across eleven tracks that deliberately never fully commit to either style. Now 8 years since he formed the band, vocalist Graham Sayle brims with the notable confidence of a longstanding performer, bringing with him the energy of the band's celebrated live shows; raw and impassioned, and as understated as it is direct. Despite being formed in London and in part due to Graham's Merseyside upbringing, the five-piece present with a distinct North of England vibe, brilliantly embodied in the Madchester sucker punch of 'Mind's A Lie' which, alongside the mid-'90s indie stylings of the likes of 'Feeling Bless' and 'Deserve It', effortlessly hark back to a long-gone era.
'Guided Tour'
is available now