the High Dials

Artist Information

Biography

The High Dials are a psychedelic pop band from Montreal, Canada. Devoted to classic sounds and songcraft, yet creatively restless and experimental at heart, they have produced a varied repertoire of anthemic power-pop, shoegazey ambience and melancholic folk-rock balladry. They have won high marks for their live performances from the New York Post and Brooklyn Vegan.

The band debuted in 2003 with "A New Devotion" (Rainbow Quartz Records), and began touring extensively. The album made a fan of Little Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen fame, who slotted them in with the Strokes, the Stooges and other music legends at his Underground Garage Festival in 2004.

"War of the Wakening Phantoms" (2005) was their follow-up album. Produced by Joseph Donovan (the Dears, Sam Roberts) and mixed by Dave Bianco (Tom Petty, Teenage Fanclub), it won rave reviews from influential publications including NME, Spin and the Washington Post. The album went to number one on Canadian college radio charts and The High Dials supported the release as US and UK tour partners for both Brian Jonestown Massacre and Neko Case.

In 2007, the band released The Holy Ground EP, which featured a collaboration with Rod Argent of 60’s legends The Zombies! That same year, their song "The Holy Ground" was featured in a nationwide ad for Rogers mobile in Canada.

The High Dials’ third album, "Moon Country" (Fontana North/Universal, 2008), is a spawling double album that began in a remote stone cottage in Ireland and features droning dance grooves, spaced-out rock anthems and cosmic love songs. After an opening slot for Echo & the Bunnymen at SXSW 2009, the band built a home studio in an old naval building in Montreal and began work on their 4th LP. The resulting release, "Anthems for Doomed Youth" (2010) is out now on Rainbow Quartz Records.

Instrumentation

George Donoso III - Drums
Eric Dougherty - Vocals, keys
Robbie MacArthur - Guitar
Trevor Anderson - Vocals, Guitar
David Jalbert - Bass

Discography

A New Devotion - CD (2003)
Fields in Glass - EP (2004)
War of the Wakening Phantoms (2005)
The Holy Ground - EP (2007)
Moon Country - CD (2008)
Anthems for Doomed Youth (2010)

Links

• Facebook
• Last.fm
• MySpace
• Twitter

Audio

• Chinese Boxes
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• The Holy Ground
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• My Heart Is Pinned to Your Sleeve
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• Our Time Is Coming Soon
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• Killer of Dragons
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Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• Independent On Sunday (UK) [+ Show ]
  

  In another era, The High Dials might have been one of the bands on Nuggets. Their name, album title ...In another era, The High Dials might have been one of the bands on Nuggets. Their name, album title and sleeve design reek of 1960s psychedelia, and their music plugs into the same watercourse of mystical guitar pop. Hailing from the Montreal scene that spawned The Dears and Arcade Fire, they’ve more in common with the new wave of thoughtful guitar bands that includes The Shins and Essex Green, with their precise guitar interplay underscoring songs about being adrift in the world, or being hopelessly in love. Tracks such as “Soul In Lust” and “Sick With The Old Fire” breathe new life into pop’s tired romantic lexicon. In the eight-minute epic “Your Eyes Are a Door,” singer-songwriter Trevor Anderson is so flooded with desire he sees planetary bodies inside a lover’s eyes – while his band’s arrangements have echoes of soft rock legends Big Star, Love and The Moody Blues. Already gaining admiring notices from such as Miami Steve and Neko Case, there’s every chance their belief that “Our time is coming soon/Pull up a chair let the gods make room” could become reality. 4 stars.

• Psych-pop perfection [+ Show ]
  

  Like Montreal mates and fellow anglophiles The Dears, The High Dials hail from Canada via Camden in ...Like Montreal mates and fellow anglophiles The Dears, The High Dials hail from Canada via Camden in 1995 (like Murray Lightburn, frontman Trevor Anderson sounds like Damon Albarn) but with a detour via Carnaby Street in 1967. Consequently, with this second album, they have made a latter-day psychedelic classic, which sounds like “Going Blank Again”-era Ride jamming with the Zombies- the ace 60s group currently soundtracking the Magners Cider advert. But, although it’s ice-in-the-glass time for summery stompers such as “The Holy Ground,” there is a real melancholy here; the ghostly presence makes itself felt on dark, introspective tracks such as “Lucifer’s Dream” and the incredible “The Lost Explorer.” 8 out of 10.

• RECOMMENDED: What’s blasting from the SPIN offices? [+ Show ]
  

  These 60s revivalists write songs with titles like “Your Eyes Are A Door” and blur their psychedelia...These 60s revivalists write songs with titles like “Your Eyes Are A Door” and blur their psychedelia with pre-Britpop shoegazing. At times their sunburst melodies sound arena-big, at times they sound like elegies written in country churchyards, next to the Hacienda club, over past the orphanage where all the kids eat big bowls of cholera for breakfast. RECOMMENDED.

• ALL MUSIC GUIDE (USA) [+ Show ]
  

  On their second album, "War of the Wakening Phantoms," Montreal's High Dials cast off the '60s strai...On their second album, "War of the Wakening Phantoms," Montreal's High Dials cast off the '60s straightjacket that gave their first album the feel of a museum piece or a school assignment. They follow the initial steps made on the follow-up EP, "Fields in Glass," and open up their sound to include more modern reference points like the Stone Roses, the '90s shoegaze sound, and, somewhat inevitably, new wave. The extra layers of influences free the High Dials from the past, and they magically end up sounding like no one but themselves for the most part. Sure, you can still spot references at times, but they are less obvious — a little Kitchens of Distinction here (in the hazy walls of guitars on "Strandhill Sands"), a dab of Moose there (the shoegaze & western slide guitar on "Master of the Clouds," the plucked acoustic guitar on "Lucifer's Dream"), and some classic Ride all around ("Sick with the Old Fire," "Higher and Brighter"). Best of all, there is almost no Who to be found anywhere, but there are soaring vocal harmonies, waves of guitars, and gloriously free and easy-sounding songs — like "Our Time Is Coming Soon," "A River Haunting" (which features some wonderfully bad-sounding synth washes), the epic ballad "Your Eyes Are a Door," and "The Holy Ground," a pounding rocker that opens the album with a biff bang pow! — that overflow with a joyous energy that is surprising on first listen and heart-warming on the next 20. It is always fun when bands reinvent themselves, mostly because they usually botch the job and become laughingstocks, but the High Dials do the nearly impossible and make the makeover work for them in the most delightful way. War of the Wakening Phantoms is the sound of a band discovering its soul and creating something beautiful and big — really big in a way that bands like Moose and the Catherine Wheel never quite were back in the day. If you thought the first record was nothing special, come back and give the band another chance, because this album will blow you away. If this is your intro to the band, welcome to a surprisingly great album.
  4 ½ stars
  

• Globe and Mail (Canada) [+ Show ]
  

  There are those stoned, golden afternoons, endless, with hours strung together by big moments and pl...There are those stoned, golden afternoons, endless, with hours strung together by big moments and plateaus – if only those days could be bottled and sold. And then, with “War of the Wakening Phantoms,” The High Dials do just that. The sophomore album from the Montreal lucid dreamers is an immaculate, narcotic pop record, ebbing and flowing with cloud-break vocals and jangled psychedelia, optimism and doom. You’re not sure; you need a taste? Try track no. 3, “Our Time Is Coming Soon,” addictive because of its crashing guitars, R.E.M. quotes, sitar bits, and prophetic imagery (“Get up, get up and see/Our glorious destiny.") We’re up, and we see. The time of The High Dials has come, and none too soon.

• NOW (Toronto, Canada) [+ Show ]
  

  If you're not already in love, this album approximates its euphoric stupor, like when Natalie Portma...If you're not already in love, this album approximates its euphoric stupor, like when Natalie Portman played New Slang for Zach Braff in Garden State. Hell, Montreal's High Dials may change your life. Listening to "Holy Ground" is like swimming through warm, deliberately fuzzy psychedelia. Groovy 60s-themed tunes are the staple, and an infectious sweetness winds through the blend of garage rock riffs, sublime bass licks and militaristic drumming, as in "Our Time Is Coming Soon." Tether that to airy vocals and you're whisked away to an idyllic fantasy land. All that without the psychological repercussions of hallucinogenic drugs. Far out, man. 4 stars.

• Recommended [+ Show ]
  

  All hail the modern psychedelic concept album! The High Dials emerged from the glittering chrysalis ...All hail the modern psychedelic concept album! The High Dials emerged from the glittering chrysalis in 2003 with "A New Devotion," a sprawling, atmospheric album of freewheeling cosmic grooves linked by a linear narrative. On their brilliant follow-up, "War Of The Wakening Phantoms," the Dials keep to their dramatic leanings, weaving a tapestry of celestial pop numbers that keep to the tradition of lyrical storytelling and musical adventure. Formed in Montreal, that northern hotbed of keenly intelligent, unwittingly hip rock 'n' roll, the Dials sound instead as if they were birthed on foggy Scottish moors or some stormy Irish coastline. This is Druid music—sun on blades of grass and white lace against a girl's bare leg, pretty, pagan melodies perfect for May Day celebrations and orgiastic fertility rites. The band has an obvious affinity with its British Isles brothers, particularly the musings of Belle And Sebastian, Super Furry Animals, and Spiritualized, but the grand heft of the North American continent keeps this sound a bit more grounded. The inspiration here is green earth, not the outer edges of space, and the journey leads to inward introspection. The High Dials know when to cull their inspirations (Leonard Cohen lament, Donovan swing) and when to spin their own yarns. Deftly mixed by Dave Bianco (Teenage Fanclub) in the City of Angels, Wakening Phantoms is one of the most pleasant albums in recent memory—melancholy in only the sweetest of ways, full of loping, giddy choruses and a pastoral, utopian feel. Put in on and you'll go dreaming.

Setlist

45 minutes to an hour, all original material.

Basic Requirements

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