The High Water Marks formed in 2003 when Hilarie Sidney and Per Ole Bratset met after an Apples in Stereo show in Oslo, Norway. The band recently followed up 13 years of being off the scene with a critically and commercially welcomed new album and then quickly came in hot with another batch of 13 songs that make up Proclaimer of Things, which is set to be released on February 4, 2022.
Check out The High Water Marks’ kaleidoscopic new single, “Fantastic Machine,” a song we think Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch and Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus would get behind. There is a white wall of sound on this buzzed-up cut where almost anything rides free of musical judgment.
“There has been a lot of talk about machines that are helpful, good, and maybe even great, since the industrial revolution. This song is about a machine that is fantastic, so fantastic that it takes on a life of its own. It’s built to last. Fantastic in the good sense because it’s a marvel of both production and ingenuity. At the same time, it is not so fantastic when you think about how it got away from us. It makes us need to hide and run in another direction. We hide from our creation, because it’s taken over our lives both in the way we think, and the things that we do. We can’t lose ourselves!”
