A DIY Legend in the Making

Winston Hightower is indisputably punk. That’s not just because he’s been a touring bassist for hardcore bands like Soul Glo, Minority Threat, and Twompsax. The Columbus-born musician first began self-releasing his music over a decade ago, and across countless releases — most of them hard to find these days — Hightower’s career so far has seen him subtly incorporate post-punk, rap, and jazz into his ramshackle indie pop. He’s accrued the type of vast, elusive catalog that seems requisite for a DIY legend in the making. Judging by his songs, he’s an outsider, but he’s also a deeply connected player in the Midwest’s underground scene. His fringe appeal and defiant spirit together position him to be a celebrated cult favorite in the future. A few decades from now, perhaps 100 Acre Wood will be the record to introduce late arrivals to Hightower’s world.

Cohesion and Craft

Out Friday, 100 Acre Wood is technically Hightower’s second proper LP, following 2024’s Winston Hytwr, which was his debut for the venerable K Records’ imprint Perennial. But where Winston Hytwr served more as a sampler compiling highlights from Hightower’s extensive song index, 100 Acre Wood is the 33-year-old’s first truly cohesive project both sonically and thematically. Recorded both at his home and in the studio at Mobile Control in K’s hometown of Olympia, Washington, 100 Acre Wood accomplishes the rare feat of retaining a demo’s rawness while still feeling complete and wholly gratifying. It’s decidedly lo-fi, but still derives density and texture from its smaller details: “What do you know?/ I’m feeling better now,” Hightower sings on the stripped-down guitar ballad “High School,” his voice layered on top of a falsetto snarl that’s both endearing and slightly creepy. Vocals are double-tracked across the album at numerous points — not in Elliott Smith’s uniform, atmospheric style but in a purposefully discordant way that evokes a sense of tension within Hightower himself.

A Sonic Collage

You could cite a lot of artists to describe the collage that is 100 Acre Woods’ sound: At its folkiest, Hightower’s youthful yelp draws easy comparisons to Daniel Johnston’s. The lively, danceable basslines of tracks like “Me Time (I Need Some)” and “Blum House” recall the no-frills nerve of early riot grrrls Slant 6. “Fighting For Frequency” and “Poppi” nod to Hightower’s jazz adoration in their pattering drums, while the wiry guitar tones of “On Our Own Time” or “Beyond The Thicket” are aligned with the power pop/post-punk revivalism of his Perennial labelmates Sharp Pins. But Hightower is by no means an imitator, and the proof is in his clever yet seemingly off-the-cuff songwriting, which flows so naturally between all its left turns that it simply can’t be a front: “Some say I’m trouble/ But I don’t pay it mind/ Sike, I do all the time,” he shouts on “Blum House.” “I just covet/ What the hell is wrong with me/ I just love it.”

Sentimentality and Revelation

With no maxed-out production to hide behind, 100 Acre Wood is unabashedly sentimental. It often finds Hightower in a state of not-quite-jadedness — “You’ll be OK/ Is what I’m told/ To say at times/ When you’re totally not,” he sneers on “Virtue Signaling” — but there are small revelations hidden in his apparent disaffection. On the jangly, hooky early single “Lay Low,” he seems to reckon with the option of leaving his hometown: “I can go anywhere that they go,” he realizes upon examining his “bleak” surroundings. “Help Is On The Way” finds Hightower’s narrator resistant to the winds of change, but later on “The Me (I Know),” he’s somewhat shocked to discover that change might be necessary in order to become the most fully-realized version of himself: “Over again in my mind I try/ To be born again as the me I know/ And over again I am still to find/ I’m not who I was all those years ago.”

The sentiments Hightower begins to unpack on 100 Acre Wood are common on the surface, but they’re distinguishable by the enticing air of peculiarity in the record’s context. The album opens with some of its most memorable confessions: “Everything feels right/ But in the meantime/ I wouldn’t miss life/ Long as it’s you I/ Stand with in moon side,” Hightower sings on “Moonside,” a song simple and sparse enough to be a playground chant. There are plenty of songs whose makers are so clearly dispassionate that they don’t care if they live or die. Hightower, meanwhile, seems to offer a different route to that same conclusion: Is it possible to love so deeply that heaven and the human condition are indistinguishable? In his world of stories, that very well might be the case.

Winston Hightower – 100 Acre Wood [LP]

$21.06