Highland Eyeway - Highland Eyeway

Review by: SEBYA
City Soundcheck

Vancouver’s own Highland Eyeway release their debut LP

Highland Eyeway, a band emerging from the tucked away corner of Lynn Valley, has staked their claim in Vancouver’s music scene with their new, strikingly beautiful album. Their self titled debut full length album creates reflective and intellectual soundscapes that make the listener feel like a mere dot in a vast and sprawling world.

When asked about the band’s insight behind the album, vocalist and guitarist Houston Matson-Moore said “Music is a tool of expression. Each song correlates to a feeling or experience projected through soundscape. This album explores feelings of a struggle with personal growth, life themes: existing with consciousness, self realization, dream travel, lucid life. Levitation. Looking into shadows and periphery.” Such thoughts and emotions are captured through the album's nine songs, each a unique creation, skillfully crafted, artfully delivered. Maston-Moore cites such influences as The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Alice in Chains, Dead Meadow, Neil Young, and Smashing Pumpkins as personal musical inspirations that have helped mold the sound and essence of the band.

All of these emotional, conceptual, and musical influences can be noted throughout the progression of the album. The songs range from fast and high energy, like the confident opener “Synesthetic,” to deep droning phrases of shoegaze gold. “Olive,” spanning a full ten minutes, perhaps best encapsulates the thoughts and feelings described by Matson-Moore. The track explores the deep, murky waters of consciousness and self-representation, gradually building and unfolding, passionately inviting the listener down a path of discovery and introspection. The hopeful closing number “Tomorrow,” a calm and reflective instrumental piece, sums up the work perfectly. Created and developed amidst the rain and tempest of the Pacific Northwest, the starry-eyed acoustic melody reflects the promise and ambition of the young band, at peace with the present and with hope for the future.

The album itself was recorded on Gabriola Island in February of this year by Jordan Koop at the Noise Floor Recording Studio.