Any truly great band, regardless of genre, endures because of their ability to be personable. Take a minute to internalize that one word. Personable. The behemoths of the music world aren’t just behemoths because they know how to write a great song, they’re behemoths because of the way the song touches it target audience.
A great song can reach across cultures, unite people of differing beliefs, and speak to people from any walk of life. It tells a distinctive story, usually with some sort of universalist theme, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Then, to epitomize the greatness, they make that kind of communicatory process cool.
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The new, independent musical group the High Plains Drifters succeed on this front with flying colors. The odds were already stacked against them, as an independent act, because of their starting the band during the throws of the Covid-19 pandemic, and because of the fact they don’t follow the rigid guidelines of what constitutes good publicity and good ratings in an era where the word ‘status quo’ is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Even with the release of their new, trending single Summer Girl (Redux), this kind of personable nature never fades. It makes the weirder, more off-kilter aspects of their song realizations that much more palatable, and that much more interesting.
“I hope that our listeners will both dig the music and hear lyrics that make them say, ‘Yeah, I know that feeling, I’ve been there.’ We heard, from a lot of deejays who played Since You’ve Been Gone, that it took them back to how they felt about the loss of someone who was thought to be ‘the one and only.’ And it’d be cool if people feel like they’d like to see us in concert. With COVID over and a second album almost under our belt, we’re finally in a place where we could actually play a concert of decent length without doing too many covers,” frontman Larry Studnicky stated, in an interview with Wonderland Magazine. “I think I speak for everyone in The High Plains Drifters when I say that the tune that put the biggest smiles on our faces, as we finished mixing it, was Ruby, Run Away With Me. I don’t know if it’s ‘single-worthy’, in terms of where radio is these days. But we love it. I especially dig the 12-string Rickenbacker parts played by Mike DoCampo.”
This kind of quality is reflected in Summer Girl (Redux), even though it does adopt a decidedly sunnier, more flashy kind of undertone. You definitely know even when they switch course when a release comes out from the band, complete with their distinctive, neon-colored artwork, packaging design, and overall presentational quality. “We’ve kept all the artwork connected with album 2, including the look of the music videos we’ve released and will soon release, focused on the theme of the isolation that comes from losing one’s lover,” Studnicky stated, regarding a previous EP. “In almost all cases, that isolation has become represented by a spaceman. You don’t get much more isolated than when you’re lost in space (at least, in this waning era before space has been colonised).”
Mindy McCall
