Mild High Club

Mild High Club is a psychedelic pop group helmed by Alexander Brettin, a Los Angeles-based musician who originally hails from Chicago. The group’s sound is pleasantly woozy and laid-back, but shows a subtle attention to detail without being excessive or indulgent. They made their debut with the 2015 full-length Timeline, followed by the more fleshed out Skiptracing a year later and a 2017 collaboration with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Sketches of Brunswick East. He then took his time to develop the fourth Mild High Club album, Going Going Gone, which arrived in 2021.
Brettin began working on Mild High Club material in 2012 by himself, using guitars, keyboards, computers, and a four-track recorder, and shuttling between Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles. Along the way, he met several musicians across the nation who contributed to his album and backed him up during live gigs. Mild High Club signed to Stones Throw at the end of 2014, and a 7″ single, “Windowpane,” was released in early 2015. The group’s debut album, Timeline, appeared later in the year on the label’s newly formed Circle Star Records imprint. A year later, Stones Throw released the band’s more ambitious sophomore full-length, Skiptracing, then in the early months of 2017, Brettin collaborated with Australian psychedelic seekers King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard on an album. He traveled to their Flightless HQ studios in East Brunswick, Melbourne, Australia, where he and Stu Mackenzie figured out some rough ideas. The duo were then joined by the rest of the band to fill in those ideas. Titled Sketches of Brunswick East, the album was a mix of soft rock, psych-pop, and cosmic jazz. It was released by ATO in mid-2017. After a lengthy break, Mild High Club returned in 2021 with Going Going Gone, which addressed subjects such as paranoia, gun violence, and climate change. ~ Paul Simpson