The High Society

It is a quiet Tuesday night in Camden Town, an early summer evening on the Chalk Farm Road. A pub next door to a brothel is hosting a rock night, three bands from up and down the country are hoping to make a mark in the rock’n’roll capital of London.



The group sandwiched between openers and headliners is The High Society, a ragamuffin racket from the West Midlands that sound as if they went to Rock’N’Roll High School and look as if they could use a good wash. Looking out from a stage no higher than a mobile phone into an audience that can only rightly be described as ‘sparse’, the temptation is to feel sympathy for the five young men onstage. The High Society have travelled a long way. Petrol is expensive. There ain’t no love in the heart of this city.



But, still, what are you gonna do? Well, what The High Society are going to do is perform the kind of show you would imagine a band might play were they're headlining the Whisky A Go Go on LA’s Sunset Strip. Close your eyes and you could imagine them onstage at the Hammersmith Apollo. It’s only when each song ends does the reality of their surroundings once again crash The High Society’s party.



It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock’n’roll.



“We play music the way it’s supposed to be played,” says Maxi Browne, the band’s frontman. “We are here to start a war on mediocrity, a war that we are already winning"



Strong words from an unheard band, but even in Camden Town on a quiet Tuesday night the group have the right trousers to go with this kind of mouth. With drummer Ash Sheenan playing as if he's wired to the national grid, The High Society are the sound of electicity on the loose, on the loose and looking for trouble. One moment Maxi Browne is hanging from his microphone stand, the next he’s shuffling off to bar, singing songs to the pretty girls holding gin and tonics. Done with this, he clambers atop a speaker stack and leers as if his audience numbered thousands. He finishes the show not from the stage, or from the floor, or from the PA column, but outside the venue. And why not? There is a smoking ban these days, don't you know.



“What we want from people is to just listen to what we do,” he says. “We are unpredictable, we are exciting, we are showmen. We are all the things that rock’n’roll should be but has forgetten how to be.”



Given the strength of The High Society’s performance in front a few dozen paying customers in Camden Town, the mind boggles at what the band might be capable of if things really started to go their way.



“To be put it bluntly,” says Maxi Browne. “We are fucking brilliant.”



- Ian Winwood - Kerrang Magazine



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