Up on High

Up on High will sound like nothing much the first time you listen, but stay with it, because the songs are soft and unassuming, but excellent, and they’ll catch you in the end.

Up on High does a fantastic job of combining a multitude of influences and creating a sound that is unmistakably Vetiver. The pared down tracks can be numbered amongst the best that Cabic has produced, making Up on High one of the best albums of Vetiver’s career.

There’s a fresh, dewey feel to the songs without retreating to the innocent austerity or freak-folk severity of Vetiver’s mid-‘00s emergence.

Nursing you back to equilibrium with its sumptuous balm of laid-back growers, Up On High is a near-perfect hangover record. [Nov 2019, p.93]

Vetiver offers a teasing mischievousness in the music, as well as its lyrics, through bouncy rhythms and off-kilter tempos to shake things up. There's roguish magic to the lightheartedness of the album as a whole, such as that of a first kiss.

It's a clear and focused return to the peaks the band found in the mid-2000s, and as enjoyable a listen as the best of their work.

Surprises may be fewer this time around but, with their warmth and grace, "Wanted Never Asked" and "Filigree" are two of several songs here that rank with Cabic's finest. [Dec 2019, p.35]

The record is perfectly pleasant, one that tries so hard to soundtrack that feeling of being in nature, maybe stopping to admire the view on a hike in the mountains, but it lacks the lyrical or musical immediacy to truly stand out among the handful of other albums (particularly those in his own back catalogue) that aim to do the exact same.

The result is undeniably lovely, if never truly transcendent. [Jan 2020, p.114]