Heights album review - From Sea To Sky
Heights are an interesting band in that on the surface they may appear to be simply another Progressive Post Rock band, but underlying is a Godspeed style classical formation of each track. They are also the only group I can think of that uses such a clean guitar sound with little to zero reliance of cranking the distortion up to 11 and the use of roughly a million effects pedals. Each individual track explores different aspects of sound, despite the tracks being relatively short for the genre, 5 or 6 minutes each; to pay real homage to Godspeed one would expect the songs to be at least 40 minutes long.
What's disappointing about the group is the sound they try to create at some points on this album (their second release - "From Sea To Sky"), falls flat and is unfortunately underwhelming. The break downs and climaxes are designed for far more members than the trio and a couple more guitars to layer the sound wouldn't go amiss. Al Heslop's impressive finger-work on guitar leaves me inclined to suggest that the band seem to be stuck in a limbo of Math and Post Rock, but not a working combination - it seems more unsure as to what it wants to be.
Despite this hiccup, the band still manage to convey an array of emotions in a rather short amount of time, which is a talent not to be ignored.