Ears Wide Open: Black Hi-Lighter

Kevin Bronson on November 27th, 2013

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Highland Park quartet Black Hi-Lighter makes you feel like you’re caught between T. Rex and a hard place. The foursome of James Poulos, Eric Liljestrand, Mark Reback and David Wright are loud and proud and brash without resorting to Xeroxing bands whose ghosts haunt those 1970s videos uploaded to YouTube. In March, Black Hi-Lighter released the full-length “Bite the Bullet,” an in-your-face collection of guitar jams that chew through glam, punk and garage-rock rock as if escapist bombast were a new drug. Guitarist Liljestrand, who has a host of producer credits and a Grammy for engineering/mixing, makes it hurt so good, with the veteran rhythm section nary missing a beat. Eyeliner-adorned frontman Poulos, half sneering and half crooning, is a writer and purveyor of pop culture, and if Black Hi-Lighter is one of those grand exercises in participatory journalism, we can’t wait to read the piece. One thing for certain: We have no use for New York City either.

||| Download: “NU4NYC” on a name-your-price basis on Bandcamp.

||| Stream: “Blonde Beasts of Prey”

||| Live: Black Hi-Lighter, joined by Adam Bones, the Bolts and the Filthy Souls, plays the High Voltage Magazine Holiday Party at Molly Malone’s on Sunday, Dec. 8.