While not as flogged into near-meaninglessness as those ubiquitous descriptors “punk” and “psychedelic,” “shoegaze” is nevertheless hella overused. While it still evokes something broadly knowable in most minds, it’s spawned multiple subgenres: “dreamgaze,” “Nu gaze,” “hazegaze.” I still own an old “Genre” T-shirt by Hipster Runoff’s king of the droll, Carles, that includes the absurd “no gaze” and “crab_gaze.”

For their part, New Jersey’s High. don’t exactly embrace “shoegaze,” though their layered, swirling sound has invited the term, or more recently, the offshoot “noisegaze.” That’s because their new EP, Come Back Down, out today, is heavier and denser than its predecessor, 2022’s Bomber. But High. (the period is deliberate) prioritize melodies over cascades of sound and words over pedals, even if those words are delivered sparingly, within a sonic sheen.

Both records mine personal trauma, but on Come Back Down, the lyrics are marginally more hopeful. Bomber’s — and the band’s — first single “Dead” grimly asked, “Can you feel happiness when you’re dead?” while on the new EP’s “In A Hole,” salvation comes through friendship and connection. The majestic “Catcher,” a tune about processing grief, ebbs and flows through a musical fog, and was accompanied by a bucolic video set on a river. And new single “Flowers” is unassuming and sweet — a flicker of romance experienced by someone unaccustomed to the feeling.

That someone would be High. vocalist and guitarist Christian Castan, who has the sort of “it” quality of a slightly mad (and just maybe, at times, maddening) creative that can make for special art. His in-person aura is that of an unfiltered, feral charmer bursting with ideas, enthusiasm, and attention-grabbing, occasionally dark humor, not above a well-placed troll. Musically, he’s more internal: an imaginative guitar player, a reluctant but affecting singer, and an open-hearted lyricist who synthesizes loss, redemption, low lows and high highs into poetic couplets.

With a yin figure that combustible, an equally creative but more tempered yang comes in the form of the thoughtful and engaging Bridget Bakie, High.’s melodic bass player, who studied journalism in school and has an eye for filmmaking — she directed the “Catcher” music video last fall. Rounding out the High. line are Jack Miller, whose serene demeanor belies his crushing, even keeled drumming, and guitarist and art savant Danny Zavala, who nearly matches Castan in blunt, frenetic energy, if not angst.

They hail individually from the North Jersey towns of Mountain Lakes, Elizabeth, Mount Olive and Paterson, but they call little Boonton, NJ — population just under 9,000 — home. If they have a seminal venue, it’s the venerable Jersey DIY space the Meatlocker, where Castan booked many a show and made countless connections. He and Bakie met while attending Montclair State College, and in 2017 Castan persuaded the bassist to join Whiner, a moody post punk outfit with a whiff of irony and a significant regional following, fronted by Castan’s older brother Cameron. Whiner lasted through the worst of COVID but disbanded in 2021, while Castan and Bakie laid the foundations of High. Initially they were a three piece, with a neighbor, Johnny Palisi, on second guitar, and a drum machine; Miller came on to play drums late that year. And with Palisi’s 2022 departure, Castan engineered the “surprise” addition of Zavala on guitar, only weeks before the band’s NYC debut, at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus.

Shepherding High. throughout has been Matthew Molnar, the band’s manager and producer, an indie rock journeyman and a Zelig-like presence in Brooklyn music for the better part of two decades, through his own bands including Friends and Kissing Is A Crime, and production work with young’uns Sunflower Bean and Jane Church. Molnar, a talent buyer and booker at Brooklyn’s Market Hotel and Queens’ Trans-Pecos, two long-running, all-ages, independent venues, has been invaluable to High., not just for his musical skills, but in terms of smarts, connections, and a general perspective on how being a band requires even more dedication today than it did fifteen years ago.

“It takes a while,” Castan repeats in the lovely “Flowers,” whose new music video was shot in the faded glory of Atlantic City. And the same could be said for the trajectory of High — eight songs in three years doesn’t qualify them as the most prolific artists around, but there’s been recording stops and starts in that time, and a ton of finding themselves by playing live, including opening dates for DIIV, Glare, and Lowertown. Which brings High. to here, with a new EP and a debut LP half done.

Stereogum sat down in Bushwick to chat with the band and the indefatigable Molnar, a week before Come Back Down’s release. Below, watch the new “Flowers” video and read the conversation.

Thanks for talking to us guys, and I know it’s a big moment with this second EP on the way. I’m sure it’s an exciting to thing to have it coming out, but is it also kind of relief, because I know — these songs have been ready to drop for a while, right?

CHRISTIAN CASTAN: Thanks! Yeah, don’t remind us… but it feels good, and it’s a relief. We’re proud of it, and we’re happy to have our first-ever vinyl. This is awesome, it’s something that we worked hard for, to get a vinyl record. It’s sweet.

And so, when was it all — the A-side, I guess we’ll call it, the newer songs — when were they all done, mixed, mastered and ready to go? Last summer?

BRIDGET BAKIE: We recorded them in April, and we had recorded some of the drums and bass in New Jersey, earlier that year? And then all the vocals, guitar and some of the drums and some of the bass was all done with Jeff Ziegler [Kurt Vile, the War On Drugs] in Philly in April. Then we started mixing after that and had them ready in late summer.

CASTAN: The mixing took a little long even though they were all tracked, because he had a busy schedule. Right? That’s what I remember happening, that the mixing schedule, after we had recorded it, we had to wait like two months before we got mixes back, which is not unusual? But it is what it is.

There were several stops and collaborators along the way, right? You began on the songs in 2023 with Sam Darwish?

CASTAN: Yeah. To demo.

And that was when — 2023?

JACK MILLER: Yeah. Some of the drum tracks that are gonna be on the new release were from that time, like that song “Flowers”? The drums are from then, but these songs were worked on for like, over a year.

CASTAN: In a chaotic way!

And you worked with Shane Furst…he’s in Jersey, right?

CASTAN: Yeah. We took a stab at some demos with him, because he is local and stuff, but I think, for some reason we switched, and just wanted to go in a different direction.

BAKIE: He did a good amount of work though!

CASTAN: Yeah. So once Jeff reached out on Instagram, that caught my interest and I sent Matt [Molnar] his info and stuff, and I talked to him for a little bit. And I was like, “Matt, I really believe this could be the right move.”

So you hadn’t worked with him before?

CASTAN: No, I was just a fan cause I am a huge Kurt Vile fan, and a Nothing. fan, so I was familiar with stuff he had worked on cause I had seen a lot of artists and releases that I liked, and a lot of people would like shout him out. I pay attention to stuff like that, and so I clicked his page, and I was like, “Whoa, this is kind of exactly the world I want to be in.” And it just felt like a level up, to record with him. It genuinely got me excited.

The press release for Come Back Down says it has “more noise, more hooks, more heaviness, more emotion” compared to the first EP. I would say that there is a heavier quality to the new songs. Would you agree, and if so is that a reflection of just where the band has evolved to?

CASTAN: We get asked this question a lot, and I feel like just all the songs that are gonna be coming out, even on the next record, have all been in this kind of pool of songs that we have played or workshopped. Nothing is like a hard evolution, like we went from this to this. Like everything has just existed, you know, song-wise. So it’s kind of complicated when people ask us this, you know, all these songs just exist in this world, and I think working with Jeff, and the production is what kind of pushed it more in that direction, to where it might have felt heavier? But we weren’t intentionally trying to go for something heavier or noisier.

BAKIE: I have a theory on that. I think that with the first EP, those songs were really written, some of them with a drum machine, some we were just in a basement. We weren’t really playing live shows, or even the shows we were playing were just smaller type of basement shows. But once we started playing with heavier bands, and recording with Jeff, it kind of put us into more of a heavier, and a live type surrounding? Whereas we would just start adding on layers, and it made songs thicker, and we were writing with more of a live kind of attitude. Rather than the very like bedroom origins of writing the first EP.

How do you guys feel about genres names and people describing High. as “shoegaze” or even lately, “noisegaze?” I have an old t-shirt with music genres names all over it, some real and some made up, “Disney-core”…”Sufjan house.”

CASTAN: Yeah I don’t know I feel less attached to the whole “gaze” thing, I feel like with our songs, in my head, that we lean on the more alternative side of indie music. That’s kind of what I tell people.

So if people kind of reflexively call it “shoegaze” do you find that kind of a reductive way to describe it?

CASTAN: No, I just feel like there’s a lot of shoegaze bands that I like, and then when I see them perform, I never feel so different than them. I feel like my approach, or our style, or what we do on guitar, it’s just way different than what’s happening in the shoegaze world, or something.

MILLER: And when people say shoegaze — there’s a lot of variety. Bands might all be “shoegaze” but they all sound different.

DANNY ZAVALA: I guess it makes it easier to just describe it, to someone, you know? Or describe it to — “everybody”? I feel like there’s only some people like me, like I could think of that shirt you were talking about, and I could think of like, “Disney-core”? Or whatever you mentioned? And I can kind of picture what that would sound like. I feel like you could come up with a bunch of names, and I could probably think of our own genre that would kind of make sense? But I think for a regular person, it’s easier to just say that.

MATT MOLNAR: Can I just speak to one thing?

CASTAN: Yeah.

MOLNAR: You know just producing them, and being involved with them in the studio, I think with a lot of shoegaze, it’s the sound first. It’s the pedals, it’s kind of making up sounds on the guitar, and then writing songs around it? But these members of High., all four of ’em, they’re songwriters. Christian and Bridget really care about songwriting, and craft, and melody. And if you hear emotion in Christian’s voice it’s because his singing was almost part of the songwriting.

So Christian, lyrically then, where you’re coming from on the more recent songs, is it a different place? I don’t know if I am reading it right, but there does seem to be something more hopeful about say, “In A Hole”…

CASTAN: No, for sure, for sure. Something earlier like “Dead” obviously was like, “Whoa, we’re going down.” “In A Hole” definitely has a more positive, you know—and then something like “Catcher,” kind of half and half.

And “Flowers”?

CASTAN: “Flowers” is super, super positive. You know, a love song. And then “George” is really dark! [chuckles]

Yeah. “George” is one where — well, with a lot of the lyrics I feel like you are speaking from something very real and specific, but they are abstract enough that…

CASTAN: Yeah I keep them open-ended so that people can relate to them, but there is a core like, meaning behind them? Like even the title Come Back Down I want to leave it open for interpretation. I like things to have multiple meanings, I think it’s cool when you can apply it to a few different things. Obviously the lyrics are really, really important to me, but I want them to be accessible enough, easy enough to understand, easy to relate to. I hate to over-explain them, because for one, the subject matter is like damaging to me, so it’s hard to revisit. But also once I’ve written a lyric I’ve made peace with a certain thing, and so I get to like close a chapter of my life. And kind of let that live, like a testimony.

Bridget mentioned in one piece that the lyric in “Catcher” comes from a place of grief. Is that grief or loss more generally? Or something quite specific.

CASTAN: It’s something quite specific. A death.

Bridget, in that same piece you talked about the “Catcher” video, which you directed, as kind of acting as a metaphor for navigating or processing grief, by floating.

BAKIE: Yeah that was the idea. I knew he had written about something very specific, so I was like, “How can I make this to a more general type of thing?” Where everybody can kind of feel it and enjoy it, and make it more general. So I thought of it like the floating, like even though you’re still on water, so you’re not steady, but you’re just kind of still moving forward. And at the same time too, it was fall, and we live in like one of the most beautiful areas, in the fall.

I’ve seen you guys say before something to the effect that you like to stay connected to New Jersey and not maybe fall into a cliché of being a New York band or maybe a “Brooklyn band”?

BAKIE: Well no, I don’t think it’s anything specific to Brooklyn, or how Brooklyn is. It’s just — being from New Jersey, there’s a thing where a lot of creatives in our state, they either go to Philly or they go to New York. You know it’s just, there’s more going on, those are just kind of the cities that you move to as like a young person? A lot of our artists leave and so we’re kind of left with nothing in New Jersey, and I like to stay and be like, “We’re from New Jersey.” I like to say that we’re still there because all our influences are from there, growing up there, and the things that have happened to us there that we pull from.

MILLER: I grew up in Mount Olive, New Jersey, which is more like Pennsylvania area of New Jersey, kinda like farmland area. But now I live in Boonton.

ZAVALA: Yeah and I’m from Paterson, New Jersey, but I went to school at Montclair State…and all my friends were in bands and stuff, and I used to see their old band.

CASTAN: John, all three of us went to the same state school, me, Bridget, and Danny. Same college, at the same time!

ZAVALA: But we really met at [Montclair, NJ music venue] the Meatlocker, I feel like our meeting point would be the Meatlocker.

CASTAN: Our local DIY club. But also we were Instagram friends, and during college we would pass by, say hi. That was pretty much the extent of it.

So in the time High. began, Bridget and Christian, you guys were also playing in [Castan’s brother] Cameron’s band, Whiner, right?

CASTAN: Yeah

And wasn’t their last album called Peace Out Cruel World?

CASTAN: Yeah. That was like the end of the band.

So you guys kind of said “peace out” to Cameron?

CASTAN: Well no, he kind of said “peace out” to us. He wanted to make like bedroom pop and stuff. And he had started other bands, he had moved into the city and didn’t want to keep doing the traveling…

BAKIE: This was during COVID, so COVID really messed with many bands.

And so Christian, Matt told me the other day that it was late 2020 that you reached out to him.

CASTAN: I reached out to Matt because I wanted to continue to work on music, but I couldn’t really afford a computer, I don’t have any recording gear, and I remember calling Matt one night. I was like, off a bender and I told him like, “Hey I would like to try some songs out.” Because I had worked with Matt before, at his house with Whiner, so I knew that like he had the gear, and also that he was chill and me and him like the same music. So I called him, and I was like, “Dude I’m ready to work on something cool,” like, “Why don’t we try to work on stuff?” And he was like, “Hell yeah, let’s do this.”

So you definitely wanted to do a band, you weren’t thinking solo?

CASTAN: I wasn’t thinking solo, I actually wanted to get a singer. I didn’t want to be the singer cause I actually hate singing? I like writing lyrics, I like making melodies, I hate singing! So I was actually—during that time when I first called Matt about working with me, in my head I was thinking like, “We’re gonna get a female singer, everything is gonna be good…” you know? But then eventually, things started, and I was like, “I have to do this now, I’ll just keep muscling it, keep going further.” Cause I wanted to tour, I wanted to be a musician, I had already fallen in love with playing shows. You know, I had fallen in love with the lifestyle.

It’s Interesting you say you hate singing because on some songs like “Bomber” the vocals are really pretty.

CASTAN: Thank you. I muscle it, yeah. Cocaine! Cocaine inspires it!

Okay! [laughs] Well then. But going back to the kind of music you make, whether we call it shoegaze or not, when the lyrics aren’t always super easy to make out, are lyrics…

CASTAN: My lyrics mean everything to me. It’s the most important part of the music to me, words are power.

So is it important then that people hear them?

CASTAN: Yes. And I think on the new songs you can hear them a little better and I hope to be in a spot where I’m confident enough and also comfortable enough to have more songs where my vocals are at the forefront. Because I spend a lot of time on the lyrics, and they mean a lot to me. Sometimes like even playing old songs like, hurts. You know, I write these songs because something inside of me is broken. But besides being in a band, like literally the lyrics are the single most important thing to me. Because it’s my message to the world, and it’s also me making peace with a lot of things.

So then when you write lyrics, do you re-write a lot? Or do you just kind of go with…

CASTAN: I workshop them a little bit. I try not to go too crazy, and like over-think it? I have a lot of — a lot of bad shit’s happened to me, so I like to just channel a feeling. Cause like, when I wake up every day? Part of my problem is my suffering is the stuff that I push to my subconscious every morning? So when I’m writing a song I like to like actually be like, “Hey, I’m gonna stop fucking numbing myself, I’m gonna stop pushing that stuff to the back of my brain where I can’t find it. I’m gonna draw it to the front, and I’m gonna make a piece of art about it, so that this can live on.”

MILLER: I think in writing the lyrics, they usually stay very much the same and the writing around it is a lot of the work.

CASTAN: Yeah. I like to repeat stuff, to give it conviction. I like to keep verses, and I know some might say it can get boring, singing the same thing over and over again, but I repeat things because they really mean something to me.

And also with your music it works kind of like a mantra in a certain way.

CASTAN: Yeah, a mantra — that’s what I was thinking like with “Catcher,” the repeating “I’ll be there to catch you.”

MILLER: We’re kind of different from other shoegaze bands, where with a lot of shoegaze the lyrics are kind of in the background? But for us it’s very much like the focal point, you know?

That “I’ll be there to catch you,” or on “Flowers” the line “Come outside, I’m waiting for you” — a lot of these lyrics seem to be about being present for someone. Is that fair?

CASTAN: John, just think about a lonely kid from New Jersey, been through the wringer, and it’s just like — I’m trying to think, it’s stuff that everyone experiences. I’m just writing about my life, and about hardships that everyone faces. And kind of, how to pick up the pieces, after being traumatized, you know? How to enjoy — you know, when good moments come to you. “Flowers” is like just a simple love song, a date song, but the feelings are romanticized. It’s just so much higher, for someone who has been down low.

Matt, when you first started working with them what were your thoughts? Because you’ve had a lot of experience working with young bands.

MOLNAR: I think before the sound was figured out, like what the textures were gonna be, exactly, it was already like both of them felt like they really had a songwriting presence. So it already felt like there was a lot you could build with, and if they wanted to be more melodic, like a Smashing Pumpkins kind of band, they could go that way, if they wanted to be a more song-focused, like Sonic Youth and be more noisy, they could go in that direction. It felt like there was a lot of possibilities.

What to you is the single biggest difference between a band forming as they did in 2020, 2021, as opposed to a band forming in 2007, 2008?

MOLNAR: I think back then it was almost like things happened so much quicker? It was like, you were in a band, and you made your demo really quickly, even if it was crappy and lo-fi, and then you put it on MySpace, and that did a little something. Or you made a demo, and you were putting it out at shows and you were trying an indie to get the 7″ out. I think things were happening a lot quicker, there was an immediacy in a certain way. I think the immediacy now is for stuff that is very social media and TikTok-heavy? More for like teenagers, and teenagers only, maybe? I don’t know but I think things happen now a lot slower.

So it’s harder, more challenging?

MOLNAR: I think it’s more challenging. Back then you could put out two songs, and get picked up by at least the first wave of cool blogs, and that would give you a lot of boost, to like, “Let’s keep doing this,” or to push it harder, or take it more seriously. And now there’s less kind of career-milestone type of rewards, to kind of keep bands going and keep bands engaged. So you’ve really gotta be loving it for the art of it, because it’s a longer climb, a slower climb, and I think it’s a harder climb.

Christian earlier mentioned “our next record.” Are there a bunch of songs that are done and have not come out?

BAKIE: It’s basically half done. I think that record is gonna be more dynamic in that there’s gonna be songs that are short, there’s gonna be songs that are really long. There’s gonna be songs that are really fast and some that are really slow. Really loud, and really quiet. And I am just excited for us to be working on a full-length that I think—a big goal of our band is to make music that is kind of cinematic. We’ve always wanted to make music that is as big and beautiful as we can possibly make it?

MILLER: It’s exciting, to do a real, full album, it’s going to be like, something else. And this one coming out is cool cause it’s basically two EP’s that were recorded two years apart? So it has its own dynamic. But what we have going forward is going to be its own thing too.

Danny?

ZAVALA: This year I just pray for love and happiness for everybody to find us all, and I feel like a lot of magic will be found [Castan is chanting “woo woo woo” in the background] and as long as he is in the room, the recording studio, I think a lot of magic will be found for these next steps. I have no idea what’s gonna be recorded next, but I know it’s gonna be good.

So later this year for the full album?

BAKIE: I would want November, but I would say it’s looking more like a year from today. But we’ll have singles out beginning late summer.

CASTAN: Yeah and it’s gonna be our best shit yet! We’re just getting started, baby. We just have one record out! Even though it’s two EP’s that’s only eight songs, so this is like the beginning of High. It took a while, but we’re here now and ready to go for the moon.

Come Back Down is out now. Purchase it here.