5 Q&A With Higher Music State
How does 'Overboard' reflect your musical journey and growth as a band?
‘Overboard’ is a happy accident of musical serendipity, born from an act of kindness and an acute yearning for sensory connection in the aftermath of lockdown. The band Higher Music State was put into a medically induced coma over a decade ago with little expectation of a revival. We'd spent a few years playing the open mic scene in London and although our first album felt like a solid creation, the momentum in the band was fading and we dismantled amicably while the taste was still sweet. Alex played for a while with our mate Paul Thompson and then Liquorice River. Meanwhile, Andrea set up Long Stride Lizzie with Anna Jackson (who she'd been singing with since before HMS in a band called The Belfries, and who also performs solo as the artist Kubalove) and the phenomenal writer/actor/performer Lucy McCormick. I switched over to writing novels, and then later on to stage plays. Two years ago Claire (mine and Andrea's eldest sister), unsatisfied that HMS hadn't received the recognition it deserved, secretly commissioned her friend, Paul Wu to create a music video for Ramon, a tune from the first album. The video was amazing, and we received it with delight and gratitude, but also a sense of uncertainty as to how to respond. At this point, Andrea had directed a couple of plays I'd written and had been suggesting I try writing a musical for the Islington Theatre Horror Festival. Having lost some special people to suicide during lockdown, this became the inescapable horror theme for the musical and in a deeply troubling 48-hour frenzy, I wrote "The Suisliders", a musical about a suicidal band intent on making their debut album their swansong. Something cathartic had happened during the process of writing the musical and I kept going, but now with a desire to engage with more uplifting subject matter. After many years of long-form writing, songwriting felt like a joy and I churned out half a dozen albums worth of material in the same number of months. By this point, the Ramon video had percolated into the collective consciousness of Alex, Andrea and I and HMS were showing signs of life. With Elliot Mason, our original bass player, busy with Rock of Ages and Dave Pearce playing drums for The Hawklords, Anna Jackson and Calam Bradbury-Sparvell stepped in on bass and drums respectively. Those first few rehearsals were revelatory. I became a parent just before lockdown and my connection with the world at this point felt spiderweb thin, but then we'd have these 8-10 hour sessions with full jack-in-the-socket emotional and sensory connection that just turned all the switches back on and some. It was still a struggle. With kids and careers figuring bigger in people's pictures we had little opportunity to play. ‘Overboard’ took a year to create, but as a group we've still had less than two weeks playing together. But somehow the drip feed kept us hungry and meant that on the rare occasions when we were able to get together the process was intensely rewarding. We have still barely begun to discover what we can collectively generate as a musical unit, but ‘Overboard’ feels like a promising beginning, as HMS, conscious and bleary-eyed, staggers from its hospital bed.
Were there any memorable or standout moments during the recording sessions for ‘Overboard?’
Like I said, the whole process when we've been playing together has been unreal, but if there were a specific moment of kids in sweet-shop joy that stands out from the making of ‘Overboard,’ it was when Cal revealed that he not only played the drums, but could also play the trumpet. You can tell how deliriously happy we were about the discovery when you listen to the album.
What is your personal favorite song from 'Overboard' and why?
So many of the songs are intensely personal for me. I needed twenty vocal takes to get a guide track down for Therapy after I wrote it, because I couldn't sing "I'm coming down hard, I'm coming down fast," without choking on the proximity of these feelings. I'm really proud of “Principles of Cliff Jumping” as one of the songs that came from the musical, for the compassion I hope it brings to a subject buried in taboo. “Don't Forget the Love” is special for the fact it's a love song, which is a rare thing for me to write, but also for the person I wrote it for, my partner Lizzie. If I had to pick a favourite though, it would have to be “Poppies”. It's the first song I wrote after The Suisliders musical and it encapsulates the shift from thinking and writing about death, to focusing on life. And it is about my daughter Betsy, who I couldn't love more, if I tried.
Where do you find inspiration for your songs or musical ideas?
Inspiration for me is in the little things that you find as you go along that feels like truth. I think before when I wrote songs, I would somehow be trying to write what I thought people might like to hear, but now I'm writing more about what's in me and just laying it out there naked.
How do you continuously grow and evolve as a band?
Hopefully by finding more overlapping gaps in our diaries! The rest doesn't seem to require any assistance.