The High Dials

Canadian rock outfit the High Dials weave together strands of classic power pop, '60s mod, post-punk, folk, and psychedelia. At the center of the group stands the songwriting alliance between vocalist Trevor Anderson and guitarist Robbie MacArthur. Early in the 2000s, amid the garage-rock resurgence, the band tasted initial recognition before moving beyond that moment to claim distinct territory through stylistically wide-ranging records such as 2005’s War of the Wakening Phantoms and 2010’s Anthems for Doomed Youth. With membership rotating around those two constants, the High Dials stayed productive, gaining broader visibility through television placements while charting fresh directions on the unusual 2019 double set Primitive Feelings, Pt. I and Pt. II.

Anderson and MacArthur launched the project in Montreal in 2003 after Anderson’s prior band, the Datsons, adopted a new identity once a New Zealand act sharing that name gained traction across North America. Treating the change as an opportunity to start anew, the musicians issued what became the High Dials’ first full-length, A New Devotion, on Rainbow Quartz in 2003. Though linked at the outset to the garage revival, that debut carried a pronounced '60s British mod flavor from which the band gradually stepped away in subsequent work. Their well-received 2005 successor, War of the Wakening Phantoms, incorporated psychedelia, folk, power pop, and shoegaze textures. Continued road work and ongoing refinement produced 2008’s Moon Country and 2010’s Anthems for Doomed Youth, while personnel kept shifting around the Anderson–MacArthur axis. In 2011 the pair collaborated with former Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham on a reading of “She Smiles Sweetly,” and two of their compositions appeared in 2014 on the Netflix series House of Cards. Emerging from a lull, the High Dials reconvened as a trio alongside producer Marc Bell to cut their fifth album, In the A.M. Wilds, issued in early 2015. After supporting dates that reached Mexico and Colombia, another quiet spell followed until the five-song Foreverish EP arrived in 2018. The next undertaking appeared in divided form, with Primitive Feelings, Pt. I surfacing in June 2019 and its companion, Primitive Feelings, Pt. II, following several months later.