Gracing the stage at House of Targ on February 25th is HIGHS, a Toronto-native alternative pop band whose debut album Dazzle Camouflage is set for release on April 8th via Indica Records. In this interview, lead singer Doug Haynes talks cross-country touring, World War I, dancing naked and his favourite things about Ottawa.
Apt613: It was only a couple of years ago that you guys came out with your self-titled EP, and now your debut album is set to be released in a couple of months as you embark on your second cross-country tour. What has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned as a band along the way?
Photo by Geoff Allen Stairs, from HIGHS’ Instagram.
Doug Haynes: A huge thing for bands is learning that you’re a family as well as a business. When you go on tour across the country, especially in Canada where there can be a lot of space between major cities and you’re in a van with people who are kind of like your siblings, you learn how to navigate being in such close proximity for a long time. Not letting it affect the morale and fostering a sense of enjoyment. We love being in a band together and I think that comes across when we play live. We love playing the songs we write, and we love playing the music with each other.
In the promo video for the album, Luke Smith was described as one of the band’s “dream producers”. What was it like working with someone like that?
It was a little nerve-racking at first because we did, in some ways, idolize him, based on the bands that he’s worked with and the work that he’s done. We had this preconceived power relation where he was this all-powerful guy and we were these lowly musicians trying to get him to bestow his musical genius upon us. We quickly established a really good work relationship and friendship, and he’s awesome because he’s a musician first and he won’t be like “you have to do this, you have to do that”; there was more of a communal process to actualizing the songs that we wanted to write. He’s British, so the humour was sometimes dry with him. In the studio when we’d be recording vocals, he’d be like “no, that’s trash, that’s rubbish,” and he’d be joking around, but when you’re doing a couple of hours of vocals it gets under your skin. We were able to laugh about it and go get coffee, go out for lunch and chill in the park on breaks. He’s definitely in our corner, and he talks us through stuff that goes beyond just music and working in the studio with bands. He helps us with where we’re currently at, and where we want to go.
Dazzle Camouflage is a wink to a form of ship camouflage used by the British and Americans during World War I – something you guys described as “being so flashy and so bold that it’s hard to identify who you are” in your promo video. How does the title tie into the sound you’re going for?
With a lot of the songs on the album there’s this reoccurring theme of presenting yourself as something that you’re not in order to cover up something that you are. It has more to do with the meanings of the songs themselves rather than the musicality of the album. We had heard of an art exhibit that was exploring dazzle camouflage and for us the fluidity of it, even just saying it, sounded nice, and we felt it really tied into the songs themselves. I write a lot of the lyrics, but it wasn’t actually my idea to call it that, I think it might have been Joel’s. He was talking about the songs and what it meant to me and the minute he described what dazzle camouflage was, the metaphor applied to the lyrics I was writing, and I was sold on it one-thousand percent.
Your latest single, “I Do, Do You?” is exactly the type of song you want to listen to when you’re having a solo dance party in your underwear. Lyrically speaking though, there’s a tone of longing to it that doesn’t go with the underwear-dance-party vibe. What’s the story there?
Let me preface this by saying that I often write songs that are shrouded in metaphor. This might sound pretentious, but I’ve always been into poetry and metaphorical ways of presenting a simple idea, and that ties into my song writing. For this song, I really wanted to set out to do the opposite, to have lines that were a literal description of what I was going through at the time. The song is basically about going through something that you’re thinking about all the time, and you know that it’s not right, and you’re wondering whether the other person involved is thinking the same thing. For the entire first verse, I just wrote down what I’d done that day. The first lines, “I came in up your front stairs/heard your voice singing out of a pop song/you were dancing around your living room/on the floor in the sun with your top off” is about going to somebody’s house and dancing naked with them. It’s something that seems really joyous, but you have these thoughts that prevent you from living in the moment and enjoying it.
It’s funny because we love playing that song at festivals and shows, and I have fun singing it, but because it’s so personal it kind of punches me in the gut at the same time. It’s an interesting relationship between the meaning behind the music and doing something you’re passionate about.
Photo from HIGHS’ Instagram.
Your sound has been compared several times to Vampire Weekend’s – are there any artists in particular you’d like to be compared to or who have inspired your work?
That’s a hard question to answer because every single person in our band has different influences that go beyond the music and extend to how we act on stage. In terms of who inspires us, the list is endless and includes a lot of close friends that aren’t well-known. The Vampire Weekend comparison is funny to me because I get it with our old stuff, but when I listen to “I Do, Do You?”, though I think of it as a dance-y tune, it doesn’t strike me as tropical whatsoever, though it does to others. It’s interesting to see how people interpret things differently. In terms of bands, I’m a big fan of Bombay Bicycle Club, and I really like their newest album. With the band we’re touring with,We Are The City, I think that [singer-keyboardist] Cayne is one of the best lyricists I’ve ever listened to in my entire life. All three of the band members are unreal musicians and songwriters. There’s also a band called Slow Club, and my favourite song of all time is by them, called “Everything Is New”. I’ve never gotten sick of it and I’ve listened to it thousands of time.
In 2014, following-up on the release of your self-titled EP, you guys embarked on your first cross-Canada tour, hitting up many of the cities you’re visiting this time around. How is it different to be on tour with your debut album on the way?
It’s always a new experience touring with a different band. Last time we toured across Canada with a band called Twin Forks, with Chris Carraba from Dashboard Confessional, which was kind of crazy for us at that stage in our career. At this stage it’s still huge – we were all in awe at that point. This time around, we’re touring with We Are The City, and the music they’re making right now is so good, we’re all big fans of theirs, so it’ll be really cool to tour with a band that we really respect but that we’re also friends with.
In terms of the cities themselves, the first tour was almost like a lightning speed tour. Not in the sense that it didn’t go on for a long time, but we didn’t spend much time anywhere. When you’re a band of our size, at our current level, you don’t have time to just relax in Calgary or Ottawa for a few days. You’ve just driven eight hours to get there, you’ve got to load in your stuff, you’ve got to do sound check before the show, and then you’ve got another eight hour drive the next day so you go to bed. It’s weird. You’re always somewhere but you can never fully commit to being there.
Photo from HIGHS’ Instagram
Among the cities you’ve already visited is Ottawa, where you’ll be playing at the House of Targ on February 25th. Has visiting the city as a band given you a different outlook on a city that is often stereotyped as being a boring, bureaucratic city laden with politicians?
Joel actually has family in Ottawa, and the first drummer who started the band with us lives and teaches in Ottawa. When we were just starting out, our homes were in Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa. Those were our places, they were where we knew we could play good shows with a good turnout and have a really good time. Genuinely, when we play Ottawa, the crowd is always receptive and really fun. We always get bagels in Ottawa, usually late at night. It’s a cool, vibrant and very cultured city. I love spending time there.
House of Targ is known for its collection of 40 pinball and classic arcade machines, and the pierogis are great. With that in mind, what’s your favourite classic arcade game?
Oh yeah, I knew about the arcade, we’re excited about that. Didn’t know about the pierogis. Personally, I don’t have a favourite arcade game, but linking this back to Ottawa, when we started out, we played at Zaphod’s, and they have a pinball machine that we’d spend the entire night at. There’s actually a mini-documentary about the East Coast tour we did one time in a crazy snowstorm, and there’s a full two minutes of us just playing at that pinball machine. So, I’d go for pinball. It can be Robocop, dragon, Mario Party, anything pinball. So fun.
Well, you’re going to have quite the variety when you come to the show.
Yes. I’m very excited about it.
HIGHS will be at House of Targ (1077 Bank St.) on You can learn more about HIGHS on their website, or find them on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes,Soundcloud, Instagram, or YouTube.
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