Album Review
The High Span
Blithering
LP/CD/DL
Release date: – 28/11/25
Our Score
Their first album was splendid. Rock and Roll for tea-sippers rather than lager drinkers. This one is too. ‘The High Span provide a strange and special blend of DIY post-pop jangle and experimental sounds, of lyric-driven guitar-indie and a bit of English awkwardness’. This is Englishness without any of the ugly connotations, says Ged Babey.
For The Man With Everything
the Perfect Gift is just
for everybody else
to have a little less.
Great lyrics, brilliant tunes, ideas which no-one has had before and a dash of social comment – Blithering – despite it’s use of archaic language (Like Billy-O) – is very much an up-to-date record from the Medway, a place which loves it’s own heritage. They answer the question of what Elon wants for Christmas and one song starts forlornly I’m too scared to listen to the news today.
If you like the Punk Rock For Gentlemen of The Fallen Leaves and the debonair art-pop of The Monochrome Set, then chances are you will appreciate the wit, style and music of The High Span.
As I said before, The High Span are: Twee. Odd. Tweedy. English. Pop. Literate. Polite…. and wonderfully anti-rock’n’roll. On this new platter-that-matters…
The songs range lyrically from weird recurring dreams (Ambrosine), to the anarchist scares of late 19th-century Paris (Superintendent Baeker). The band covering the Velvet Monkeys’ 1981 US psych-punk stormer ‘Everything Is Right’ also seems very much right.
The cover version actually betters the original by a county mile in my humble onion. And this is ba-ba-ba-beautiful…
Phantom Limb is the most-bizarre of love-lost songs: comparing the break-up to an amputation: The phantom limb of love still twitches away, it still twitches away…
Forgotten – is about a haunted radio which talks to you by name whilst playing you songs that remind you of people you had almost forgotten. The spooky signal fades in and out, like the reception you used to get on Radio Luxembourg which is mentioned.
British Summer Time manages to rhyme such typically English phrases as on-the-mend and asking-for-a-friend, whilst declaring that: British Summer Time is coming to an end / and they don’t have British Summer Time in France… and is some kind of wonderful psych anthem and a song-of-the-year in my book.
Reptilian Conspiracy is about the present day sandpit of information we bury our heads in and the blanket saturation we hide under.
Crying Eyes is just great Kinks influenced pop about how female tears can destroy a man.
A Clue marries the Velvet Underground and Bay City Rollers and a steam-powered organ solo to surprisingly magnificent effect.
The Mulberry Accelerator is a title which alludes to a whimsical, baroque Hawkwind perhaps but is just wonderful existential musing in the format of the pop song.
Just a great album of considered, crafted songs, but not over-wrought or over-played or brash and obvious and worrying about any other considerations. Classic stuff although mannered and stylish, tradition with invention and imagination. Literate and clever but not ashamed and dumbing itself down. The High Span set a high bar for themselves – and they exceed even their own expectations.
Line Up: –
Kevin Younger – Vocals, Guitar, Keys.
Mark Aitken – Bass Guitar.
Jimmy Moore – Drums.
Sarah Post – vocals
David Stewart Read – Ukulele
Recorded and mixed by Jon Clayton at One Cat Studios, London.
Mastered by Jim Riley at Ranscombe Studios, Rochester.
All words Ged Babey
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