High Bias

High Bias

It's dark outside our window, with thunder echoing over the horizon - a familiar rumble, but we can't tell where it's headed. Does this mean Purling Hiss are coming back our way? Among other things, YES. High Bias is in the air.Â There's no place like America today - but that's been true of our lunatic colony for a long time. Purling Hiss have floated through the sewer of US culture their whole lives. Growing up in a time like the 80s made a professional dreamer out of Mike Polizze, fueling a desire to escape to the perfect world where music amplifies the pain or just plain DROWNS IT OUT. Since 2009, the fuzzing rock power of Purling Hiss has taken many different forms, all emanating from Polizze's instinctive approach to playing guitar, writing songs, and hooking a feeling from disparate memories, sensations, and desired effects. At times carefree and apparently footloose in the world, other times intensely focused and wrathful, Purling Hiss are the orphaned kids of last century's rock and roll generations, lost in a society that has forgotten its way but determined to find their feet again. High Bias moves with rageful, dazed humor and soulfulness against the darkening times in which we find ourselves. With no way out, Purling Hiss hit today's bulls--- head-on, employing pounding psych-rock and punk effects, slipping signature Hissian backup oo-oo-oohs and Polizze's blistering guitar pile-ups in a full-bodied, head-ripping brew.Â Mike puts together a Purling Hiss album as a whole thing, with songs striking defiant and wistful tones in turn, mixing in odes to impermanence, spite-filled rebellion and bemused recollections along the way. High Bias kicks off at 11, blowing with first take energy into a mood of ominous portent. Right away, the power of the band all together is sick - the guys that came on for Weirdon have grown into a full-fledged Purling Hiss, with Ben and Dan feeding off each other, providing fresh rhythm ground for the songs to romp over. This creates seamless motion between disparate styles, from streamlined futurist radio-wave to blatzing punk, sweet indie-pop song craft, and barely-contained group riffage. Side one closes with "Teddy's Servo Motors," a Milk-Carton Kids/Teddy Ruxpin-haunted fever dream. This was the volcanic headwater of High Bias, a post-tour jam after the end of the Weirdon cycle that pointed the way to a new combination of pop and trash fully loaded with favorite reference points and forgotten ephemera from former eras. Throughout the album, Purling Hiss modulate styles and inspirations, drawing influence from different eras of rock, treasuring bubble-gummy moments (like the incredibly sweet "Follow You Around" and the cheeky "Get Your Way"), and mix-and-matching nostalgia for punk, dance-pop, no-wave, and krautrock, all of it melted down into a pleasingly primitive jet of tunage to spray into today.Â Album closer "Everybody in the USA" brings Purling Hiss full-circle to the repetitive stomp and antisocial fear and loathing found in early recordings, while recalling a misread 80s protest number whose anthemic chorus was used for propaganda despite everything said in the verses. This is the scourge of our American life - the manipulation and the misuse of the desires of people living their everyday lives - but Purling Hiss don't shy away from being misheard, that's a part of the confusion we're all a part of. High Bias is a brave and bold blast of popular music that lays it on the line to keep the rebellion alive in the streets of our mind. This is rock we will need in our ears as we venture into the darkness, and the next unexplored stretch of the wasteland...

Country	USA
Artist	Purling Hiss
Binding	Vinyl
EAN	0781484065210
Label	DRAG CITY RECORDS
Manufacturer	DRAG CITY RECORDS
NumberOfDiscs	1
NumberOfItems	1
Publisher	DRAG CITY RECORDS
ReleaseDate	2016-10-14
Studio	DRAG CITY RECORDS

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