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One of the best LPs of 2011, if not the best. "Another Night" (with a nice shot of the band's hometown Chicago on the front cover) is High Spirit's follow up album to their successful self-titled debut longplayer. In actual fact, it might as well be called their "proper first album" as "the white album" was only a collection of demos in the very beginning. Chris agrees: "The self-titled album only became an album after the fact. It's a compilation of demo recordings that were made for fun. So, it's been very satisfying to see how far these songs have spread! We made a lot of really cool fans simply with music. Even selling ten copies on this basis is satisfying."
According to Chris, not much has changed in the band's approach since the first album: "Everything was the same, except this time when the demo process was complete, it was off to the studio to record everything again 'for real'. Hahaha! The songwriting approach was about the same as the second demo. The first demo songs (side A on the self-titled LP) were very quick and spontaneous. The second demo (side B on the self-titled LP) has a lot more detail in the songs, which is the result of many sessions of revising and experimenting in order to get everything right. There are some exceptions always. 'I'll Be Back' actually comes from the period of the first demo! And 'You Make Love Impossible' was changing right up until the morning of the studio session!"
High Spirits are a band who likes to "let the music do the talking". I wouldn't compare them to Ghost or Dr. Living Dead! in not revealing their true identities but they do not like to come across as rock stars: "My name is Chris, and the High Spirits band is myself, Mike, Scott, Bob and Ian. We all play in other bands, and this information is more or less correct on most sources. I still prefer to let the songs represent High Spirits."
For anybody living in or near Chicago, you can always go out and check the band live, so you will know who they are and what they look like. According to Chris, they have played more than 30 gigs since the first one in August of 2009: "Our our faces are known. The High Spirits image is very basic. Same goes for our live show. Any success we achieve will come because people like the songs that we play! From the new album we have already played 'Another Night in the City' and 'Nights in Black' on our tour in May of this year. Both went over really well! 'Nights in Black' is definitely a crowd favorite. There's lots of variety in that one, and less singing than usual, so the band really kicks it out!"
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