Thursday, January 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Music: Up and away

Local act The Higher is ready to live the dream

By Brock Radke

Forget about school. Quit your day job so you can practice. If your parents are giving you shit, move out of the house. Ditch your girlfriend. Drop everything so you can practice with your band.

"Make it your life and it will be your life."

This is the advice of 18-year-old Seth Trotter, singer for Las Vegas rock band The Higher. If it sounds like a bunch of idealistic banter from an inexperienced kid, well, it probably is.

But Trotter and his buddies are riding high on that mantra. While you're delivering pizzas and daydreaming, The Higher is embarking on a tour that will stop in Hollywood, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, St. Louis and everywhere in between, all while writing songs for a full-length debut that will be recorded this summer.

After making a name in the local all-ages scene playing Huntridge shows, a two-year-old pop punk outfit named September Star decided to borrow some money and record a demo. Producer Beau Burchell happened to be in a band called Saosin that was in talks with blossoming Los Angeles indie label Fiddler Records. Burchell talked up the band's EP, Fiddler loved it and sent somebody to check out the kids from Vegas at a Something Corporate show, and after a quick name change and some paperwork, The Higher became one of several local bands to sign a deal in 2003. The EP was re-released as Star Is Dead, and sold out in Vegas stores in days.

So how do a bunch of high school kids who have only been a band for a few years find the seemingly perfect prize so many older, more experienced local groups clamor for? That's where the idealistic banter comes in.

"We're lucky," says guitarist Tom Oakes. "We really landed with the perfect people. Everyone at Fiddler is like a big family. There's no bullshit."

The band's deal includes the first album, which could be released as early as fall, and options for two more. Fiddler Records is distributed by Universal, which means The Higher's music will be moving around the country almost as quick as the band.

"Right now we're just enjoying it," Oakes says. "We just got a van and some new guitars. We get faxes with dates on them. It's like, holy shit, we're going to Connecticut."

A quick spin of the EP shows it wasn't completely luck that The Higher is moving to higher ground. If you could somehow isolate and extrapolate all the good, hard, crunchy parts of the most catchy rock songs by bands like Yellowcard, The Used and Finch, then you'd capture the sound of The Higher. There's little buildup; it's end-to-end rock.

Trotter's light, emotive vocals, he admits, are what have pigeonholed the band's music in the past. "People only think we're pop punk because of my voice, because I have a pop voice," he says. "But I think it makes the band's rock stand out more."

The music is heavy, anchored by Jason Centeno's bass. Drummer Pat Harter plays like a caffeinated octopus, and Oakes and James Mattison spin some tension with dueling guitar lines before finally crashing down together on the choruses. "Midnight," which also appeared on a Fiddler sampler EP, is a standout track, but "One for Hope" appears to be the single, as the group recently shot a video for it at various Vegas locales.

As anxious as they are to get on the road and eventually back into the studio, the band members are still just excited kids. "We all knew we wanted to perform, to do something like this for a long time, since we were little kids," Trotter says. "We're just having such a good time right now that we're not even worried about anything. Everything is happening just the way we wanted."