Listening to Highroad No. 28 navigate the emotional geometry of “Likethelast” feels a bit like watching a bruised prizefighter suddenly break into a joyful, intricate tap dance. It is disarming, slightly confusing, and entirely magnetic. Andrew JC, the sole architect behind this sonic landscape, has constructed something that defies the dusty expectations one might hold for an outfit born in the late 90s alternative scene.
You brace yourself for the heavy, sludge-laden dragging of post-grunge anguish, but the track immediately pulls the rug out. Instead, you get these airy, high-register vocals that sustain and float, detached yet intimately close. Beneath that ethereal layer, there is a strange machine at work a driving, groovy low-end pulse interlocking with crisp percussive clicks. It’s hypnotic. The oscillating textures create a layered harmonic structure that feels like it’s building a staircase out of thin air, step by syncopated step.
The lyrics grapple with the terrifying necessity of failure the idea that you have to break to grow. It touches on the fragility of loving without a safety net, that specific tension where you aren’t sure if you’re flying or falling. But the music doesn’t wallow. It has a determination to it, a weird, eccentric energy that frames the struggle as something constructive. It’s uplifting, but not in a commercial way; it’s the sound of someone smiling while they grit their teeth, trusting that the chaos is taking them somewhere necessary.
Is it possible that our clumsy stumbles are actually just a more interesting form of choreography?
