The High Standards’ latest release is a four-track EP called My Josephine, which isn’t much music to review. Fortunately the band completed a full-length, self-titled record back in May—but we might as well cover both, while we’re here. I checked them out after receiving an email from High Standards clarinetist and bandleader Luke Holladay, so I’m grateful to him for putting me onto his outfit.
Said outfit seems to be a relatively young one, with social media channels going back just two years, so I don’t feel too ignorant having ignored them up to now. In a poignant reflection of recent world events, their posts began in earnest during early 2020—when they enjoyed a residency at French Quarter venue The Starlight Lounge—then dried up abruptly for almost two years. But now the band is back (unlike the Starlight, sadly) and making up for lost time with a very busy Instagram feed plus two records back to back.
My Josephine was compiled “in the depths of a sweltering New Orleans summer,” its virtual liner notes read, with songs which “should call to mind an easy stroll along the levee, a tall iced tea, an old shade tree, a yearning for love.” Its title track flew straight into my good graces by evoking memories of Bugsy Malone—my very favorite childhood movie—through Ellis Dyson’s very Paul Williams-like vocal. (Grammy-winning composer Williams wrote Bugsy
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