High Places

Having been wowed into submission by the intricacies of High Places self-titled debut album, we caught up with Mary Pearson and Rob Barber to talk about their boredom with conventional bands, cellphone injuries and the joys of home recording.

Is it true you were penpals before you were bandmates?

Mary - "Yeah, we lived in different places in the country so we'd talk on the phone and write letters and stuff."

Rob - "We'd write letters and make each other mix tapes and usually talk on the phone every night until we'd fall asleep. I woke up on my phone once cause I fell asleep while we were on the phone, I think you just hung up or fell asleep too."

Mary - "They say that's really bad because of radiation. We'll probably have cellphone injuries later in life."

Rob - "They'll be able to cure it… But we had met just through a mutual friend and as soon as we did for whatever reason we were close and just passionate about the same things.

Mary - "We were introduced in New York in December 2005 and then I set up a show for Rob in January and from then until I finished school in April, we talked a lot on the phone and then we started a band."

You seem to have come from very different backgrounds, Mary you're a classically trained musician whereas Rob you grew up during the DIY, hardcore era.

Mary - "I was trained in the bassoon but I was involved in a pretty DIY punk scene in Michigan that was just a different kind of style because, no offence, but I'm a little bit younger than you Rob. When Rob was going to a lot of shows in Phillidelphia, the scene was a little bit tougher and the music was more hardcore. In Michigan it was more, and I shouldn't compare us 'cause we get it a lot, but Beat Happening, In Olympia, people making zines and having shows in living rooms. It was more of a gentle scene but still pretty punk.

Rob - "To be honest with you, the punk scene that I was coming out of was incredibly diverse. It ran this really big gambit of different types of people at the same show. You'd have gentle, proto-emo type people and dudes who grew up in New York city who were tough guys, generally good people but just more urban. I was really drawn to that."

I've become quite fascinated in the way you make your music, not being able to decipher how it's done. Is there any set way a High Places song is made?

Mary - "Kind of. I think we've been experimenting with different ways since the record came out but usually it begins with us making a bunch of recordings of just very simple melodies and rhythms that we play on any number of things, basically whatever's around the house. We do it in a, not half-hearted way, but we're usually not paying attention to it. We'll be talking or doing something on the internet while fiddling away and we'll just hit record and say we should save that.

"Then after a while, we'll just open up some files and start piecing them together and maybe come up with a beat structure that holds the song together and we'll add melodic, rhythmic things to it, just layer and layer until it's something that has a form and a structure and at some point lyrics will come into it."

Rob - "Most of the stuff that's recorded to make the songs are just gentle and quiet acoustic things and then when we start forming them into songs, they tend to sound pretty different to the way they were recorded. It's pretty scrapbooky at the start for want of a better word."

When it is, as you say, layer upon layer, can the process take time? Any songs prove particularly tricky?

Rob - "We spent a lot of time on 'Universe', a 7"."

Mary - "I think the actual amount of work we put into 'Vision's the First', that song was very laborious, I think we worked on it every day for three weeks which is a lot longer than we usually do. It was our nine to five job. We have the idea that if a song is not gelling, it's not going to work and we got so sick of that song, we just wanted to throw up hearing it. Finally we got a little bit of perspective that it worked as a song."

Rob - "It was the single and the other side of it was 'Namer' which is on the album and we wrote that mega fast, probably one of the fastest we've ever written and recorded.

You write lyrics towards the latter of the process. Why is that?

Mary - "I think I like to hear how the music is sounding because it is usually drastically different from the beginning. Sometime I get my ideas from certain sounds I hear that come out of that. I always try to keep the lyrics true to the music we're making and I think that's why a lot of the lyrics are about nature because our music tries to emulate it as much as it can."

You record using a lot of weird and wonderful equipment. Rob, I read recently you were creating sounds by using mixing bowls?

Rob - "Mostly it's just economic. There's a store in New York that we go into all the time and just drool over everything because it's nothing but every weird instrument from all over the world everywhere, hanging from the ceilings…"

Mary - "If you go there with a back pack, it's pretty stressful!"

Rob - "You want to own all this stuff but it's expensive so you kind of think I could fake that by, I don't know, using a mixing bowl.

Mary - "And that's a big part of our sound – it sounds almost like something you recognise but just a little bit different."

Rob - "It's also about the surprise. You could buy an instrument made by somebody that does a specific thing and know what it does but then there's the surprise of finding something that has an interesting tone to it."

That's one of the reasons, I think, why people have such a problem describing or pigeon holing your sound. Do you take that as a compliment?

Mary - "It's nice to not just be a garage rock band and play with the three kind of bands every night. I think this band is like a showcase of how many different influences everyone has these days."

Rob - "I just don't like seeing a band where I can see everything they're doing on a technical level. I like to not understand what they're doing so I can only focus then on what I'm hearing, only take it for what it's worth in my own ears, not sit there and pick things apart, like 'oh he's using that effect pedal'. I like things to be a surprise so I guess it's good that people can't figure us out. "

Do you have tonnes of bits and pieces you've recorded that are still knocking about?

Mary - "So much."

Rob - "For me, this is my first real band but I've been making stuff since the late 90's when I got into home recording. I think if you're an artist, painting is your medium and you make a lot but it's not like everything you do goes into a show. You make a whole bunch of stuff and you pick the stuff that works best. I don't think I could work with one idea and develop it into something, I have to have a lot of different ideas. You (to Mary) can be a little more comfortable following through on an idea. You're more of a writer. I'm more of a person who grabs a whole bunch of crap and tries to arrange them into something that hopefully make sense."

Mary - "I get panicky about picking up a book and not finishing it like I would starting to work on a song and not finishing it.

Rob - "I've no problem bailing on a book. I've the attention span of a squirrel. You've a lot more stick-to-itiveness. Do you like that word?

Mary - Yeah.

And, seeing as it's near the turn of the year, what have your 2008 highlights been?

Rob - "It doesn't feel too different to me although 2007 did seem a little less stressful. Everything was pretty carefree, we'd put out a 7" and whoever hears it hears it. 2008 didn't feel as free.

Mary - "You didn't like 2008?"

Rob - "2008 was cool, I just didn't feel as whimsical."

Mary - "Awww."

Rob - "As far as stand out things go…

Mary - "We got a cool president out of 2008."

Rob - "We got a better president, we have to see… but in terms of the band, we went to some awesome places like Helsinki and Norway."

Mary - "I think just finishing our first record just felt like a major milestone. I remember my mom had the date we were supposed to be done with the record written on our calendar and kept having to scribble it out so when we finished it, it did feel pretty amazing. "

"I think we'll be a well oiled machine in 2009, have a lot of new ideas and are looking forward to writing and recording again."