High Hazels return with the brand-new single Joined At The Lip, taken from their forthcoming EP, released in Spring 2017.
High Hazels’ music has a way of reeling you in, breaking you down and building you back up again. The Sheffield four-piece has a melancholy prowess that articulates heartache with ease.
For James Leesley (vocals/guitar), Scott Howes (guitar), Paul Barlow (bass guitar) and Anthony Barlow (drums), melody is key. Forever cryptic, songs were guided by this alone. Tender and engaging, thoughtful songwriting saw the band of brothers and childhood friends take a more conceptual approach over the past year, and the results are breathtaking.
An affinity with escapism isn’t a remote impression for High Hazels, but something to which they are intimately bound. The band captures the hopelessness of a love-fuelled haze: “Devotion flows so quick, but I’m designed to make the worst of it.” Finding an interesting balance between weightless verses and brooding choruses, the group wanted lyrics to oppose the feel of the music.
There’s no light without darkness, and it’s those delicate moments High Hazels savour and so beautifully construct into song. “I remember Scott Walker being played a lot around the time of writing ‘Joined at the Lip’-before practices, in the car and stuff-and the way he delivers his voice really got us” says Leesley. “That’s how the opening melody came about really. Trying to elongate certain parts of the vocal so it sneaks off without telling the music where it’s going was something we’d never really tried to do before.”
