About High Hazels
Destined to be Sheffield's next great band, High Hazels are James Leesley (vocals/guitar), Scott Howes (guitar), Paul Barlow (bass guitar), and Anthony Barlow (drums).
The sound of High Hazels is the sound of nostalgia chiselled from vintage gear. In the grand tradition of enigmatic, bird boned guitar fetisheurs such as Marr, Reilly and Ryder-Jones, Scott Howes stands stage right dosing bruised souls with the medicine of minor chords, sounding the depths of the loneliest heart with waves of tender reverb.
A second guitar and a sad voice singing out from the boards without stage school theatrics or lad rock tics, freights the songs with an honesty and a yearning that carries them aloft long enough for the spell to work. The magic might even be in the fact that the band don’t know where the magic resides. James Leesley, stepping up behind Tim Buckley and Billy Fury, may look like the tea lad but his voice channels the strident tone of the Greenwich Village folkie and the plaintive croon of the jukebox balladeer.
The release of their self-titled debut album on October 27th on Heist or Hit Records will set the band of brothers and childhood friends to join the steel city's lineage of renowned songwriters. To ignore a band this good would be to ignore the calm before the storm.
