High Minded Lo-Fi From Winston Hightower

Written by Kevin J Elliott | Originally in (614) Magazine

Skateboarding was the reason Winston Hightower and I were talking over the phone. Lost in the translation of bad reception in my living room, I then realized we weren’t speaking in person at the end of an exhausted workday simply because of an injury—on a skateboard. Like rattling bedroom pop laments on anything that possesses a record button, that activity is more instinctual for Hightower than forced. Accidents are bound to happen.

See, since high school at Columbus Alternative, Hightower’s self-proclaimed “weirdo” personality was default. There has never been an awkward phase. Making music, skating, playing house shows in an infinite number of hardcore bands—that was just as much of a curriculum as sports or chess club were for “normal” teens. At 23 though, with the December release of Too Close to Home (on Superdreamer Records)—a now mythic tape that taps into a primal joy and faded yearning that is central to Hightower’s true voice—he’s become a sonic polyglot. The list of punk bands he’s either started or participated in—Tastes Kinda Like Sad, Splashin’ Safari, Yuze Boys, Making Friends, Minority Threat—would make any local veteran blush, but in the current realm of house show bands (i.e. the sub rosa zeitgeist), projects like this are as ephemeral as trading cards and comic books. That’s not to say that any firecracker experience Hightower gleaned in the trenches (add busking at Global Gallery to his experiential CV) provided a bedrock that informs the slapdash naiveté of his solo work.

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