The High Plains Drifters Release New Music

The High Plains Drifters are emerging as one of the most exciting independent bands for 2024. It’s quite something when someone starting from relatively obscurity manages to make this big of a splash, after such a short period of time and in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. If anything, the remote factor in business meetings, transactions, promotion, and publication has democratized a formerly draconian and capricious music business built on elitism. It has allowed enterprises like the High Plains Drifters’ musical act to thrive.

URL: https://high-plains-drifters.com/

Clearly students of eighties masters in popular music, they have this deliberately imperfect, semi-mechanized sound. The kind of thing that makes freaky hip. “I never know what might trigger a song idea or when, but whatever happens I’m ready to record it,” band frontman Larry Studnicky stated to Essentially Pop. “When I’m lucky, an idea for a song gets triggered by something I’m thinking about, or some stimulus in the outside world, and the first few lines of a song – sometimes it’s a verse, and sometimes I know it’s a chorus – pop into my head along with the melody and sometimes accompanying instruments. I don’t usually hear naked melodies in my head. It’s almost always words with music for me.”

It’s that kind of spontaneity, mixed with this veteran sense of how to mix, that sets High Plains Drifters apart from their peers. While caucusing in a decidedly independent manner, eschewing excess modern commerciality techniques and the kind of flash that comes with going in a more mainstream lane, they still show this sense of professionalist flash and a genuine understanding of the craft to popular music.

The songs aren’t yet at a level where they entirely beat the establishment, but with each effort they’re getting closer. You truly get the sense you’re seeing a starry product being born, right in front of your eyes on the algorithms. This is particularly evident with the release of their new single, Summer Girl (Redux). The song is ridiculously catchy, with killer hooks and a sultry, saucy music video to boot. “I grew up being told I couldn’t sing (e.g., by the nun who ran our church’s choir). I believed it, and for ages I’d only sing when alone in a car, or back in college I’d sing around a certain jukebox while drinking with my buddies,” Studnicky stated. “…(Then) I sent (a copy of) ‘Summer Girl’ to (a vocal coach). She said to me, ‘You have all the notes you need, but you don’t know how to sing.’ I said, ‘Well, duh, no kidding – can you teach me?’ She said yes, and so for about 8 months I took weekly voice lessons from the great Maria Fattore. Then, in the studio, I sang the lead vocals for ‘Virginia’, which became the first single released from the HPD debut album. And I sounded really good. I was shocked. Every time I open my mouth now to sing, as the lead singer of this wonderfully talented band, I thank Charles and Maria for what they’ve done for me.”

Yet it’s just that, Studnicky’s dissonant vocals with all the right materials and a slightly off-putting delivery, proving to be the band’s winning card. It’s imperfect in all the right ways, just like the band itself.

I can’t wait to see where they go next.

Michael Rand