Live Review: HighSchool - Brudenell Social Club, Leeds 16.05.24

Following the release of the latest EP, Accelerator, which we gave a resounding 9 out of 10 at Backseat Mafia, HighSchool hit the road on their European tour and we caught the show in Leeds.

The Australian indie band bounced up the 3 steps on to the stage in Brudenell’s Community Room, but to a muted response as only around 100 or so made it to the gig on Friday night. Up against a couple of other big events in town, not least Leeds Utd play off semi final, maybe it was just bad luck with the timing. Certainly, with a band on the rise like this, I expected to see more people in there.

Even so, the band put on a typically classy show, coaxing us through their luxuriously layered set. Characterised by the heavy reverb on lead singer Rory Trobbiani’s vocal and the chiming guitar sound, the set is tinged with a bit of melancholy, and the crowd sway almost in sympathy with the emotive lyricism.

A dozen songs take around an hour to perform, and even in the sparsely populated room, you can feel the engagement as the crowd are captivated by the richness of the sound on stage. Lilly Trobbiani coolly marshalls the keyboard, with Luke Scott on bass providing the foundations. As always, there’s no live drummer, and at times, I feel like the addition of a live kit would give the sound a little more immediacy but the sound is still high quality.

Older tracks like De Facto and Frosting are still melancholic and anxiety inducing. We’re treated to 4 of the 5 tracks on the new EP, right up at the start of the set. In these tracks, you can hear the influence of The Cure and Joy Division in their sound all of which helps create the atmospheric experience in the Brudenell. The cover of God’s My Pal, turns the energy up, before rounding off with crowd favourite New York, Paris and London.

There’s no fake encore, just a strong finish and a satisfied crowd heading in the balmy Leeds evening air. They’re a band that deserved a much bigger crowd, and maybe, as time goes on, they’ll find more catching on to their distinctive sound. When that time comes, we will all revel in telling those newcomers how we were there in this intimate gathering, before it all blew up!