High Places Do Daytrotter Session
Steve Schroeder Performing at the estimable Che Cafe, in San Diego
The consistently excessively excellent Daytrotter Sessions--in which traveling musicians come through Rock Island, Illinois and record a handful of songs in the tour spirit, meaning lots of improvisation, half-wrecked gear, and fatigue--have posted their newest recording, of L.A. transplants High Places, performing four tracks off their last record. In particular, we point you to a wonderfully ethereal, even more diffuse-than-on-the-album version of "From Star Dust To Sentience," the sad anthem par excellence from a band with a catalogue full of them. High Places are a surprisingly assertive live band; they duplicate nearly every sound from their records by hand, in real time, at high volume. The drifting clatter here, confused spots, and not-the-least-bit precious vocal are all staples of their sound as they create it on the run. Plus, as per Daytrotter policy, we even get a whimsical genesis explanation:
- I owe the title of this song to something my sister Laura wrote for my birthday last year. I also owe the "billion-year-old carbon" line to Joni Mitchell. I recently read Ursula Goodenough's The Sacred Depths of Nature, and it's so refreshing to hear a leading cell biologist admit to feeling freaked out by the universe's vastness and her own insignificance within it.
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