Review: High Dive – High Dive

Artist: High Dive
Album: High Dive
Genre: Indie-Pop/Indie-Punk
Label: No label

High Dive is a new project from Defiance, Ohio front man Ryan Woods. While he was on tour with Defiance, Ohio, Woods saw Toby Foster perform as a solo artist. Woods had found it difficult to express his experiences about being queer through the music that he had writing and performing. However, Woods found a sincerity within Foster’s music about that very subject and as a result Foster became a regular performer on Defiance, Ohio tours. Woods and Foster began to write and play songs together, but it was not until Nick Romy joined as the drummer that the band really began to take shape.

High Dive have labeled themselves as a queer-positive pop-punk band. It’s rare to find a punk-rock band, or any band for that matter, who take it upon themselves to craft music around the queer experience. Granted, there have been many musicians who have identified as being queer, but the number of bands that have labeled themselves, as a group, as being queer-positive are still a minority. However, that does not mean that High Dive’s queer-positive stance is in your face and completely obvious on their self titled debut album.

Recorded and mixed in October of ’11, both the vocals and instrumentation possess a very rough, natural, live quality that imbues the album with a certain charm. While many of the album’s ten tracks discuss the hardships and experience of being queer, two tracks stick out amongst all of the others; “Tennesee” and “Restless.” “Tennesse” could almost be called an anthem, letting teens and young twenty-somethings know that it’s okay to queer, that it gets better and won’t always be this hard. During the song Woods emotes about how at times he still felt afraid and still felt ashamed, but how he came to accept that part of himself.

“Restless” opens with a bright and biting guitar riff, simple piano chords and Woods describing a guy he had just met, “When I first met you/I was so impressed with/Your Lone Star tattoo/And what it means to be restless.” The song goes on to detail Woods tumultuous relationship with this guy which is so accurately described in the track’s chorus, ” ‘Cause we’re prone to fall apart/Internally and solitary with nothing to hold on to/So if we’re prone to fall apart/Let’s make sure we got one another to pick up the pieces.”

On its surface High Dive is an indie-punk album, but below the brash and bratty instrumentation and raw emotive vocals lies accounts of the queer experience. These experiences are encapsulated in the album’s ten tracks and are able to transcend sexual orientation. It’s a damn fine album, that deserves multiple spins.

Score: 7.5/10
Review written by: Ethan Merrick

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