Mild High Club - Going Going Gone
by Britta Wellenstein
You may know Mild High Club from their song “Homage” which was popular on TikTok for a hot second. The lyrics “4-7-3-6-2-5-1 to put my mind at ease” often plays while montages of attractive celebrities flash before you.
Mild High Club is a single man band of artist Alex Brettin. Brettin started the band in 2012, trying to experiment with jazz and album-oriented rock. His first album, Timeline, was released in 2015, followed by Skiptracing, in 2016. His newest album, Going Going Gone, was released this past year on September 17th, 2021.
For me, Mild High Club are the artists I put on when I study. I probably found them while listening to some modern, “new-age” jazz playlist on Spotify. Initially, I was drawn to the album art. I won’t lie, I do judge a book by it’s cover. However, the more I listened, the more I loved their music. Mild High Club provides often relaxing, yet complex music. Some of it is lyrical, but often they let the music make its way. For studying organic chemistry reactions, this type of music is lovely. It’s like elevated elevator music, but in the best way possible.
Their newest album, Going Going Gone, provides the same comfort to me. The first two songs on the album are reminiscent of one thing to me: Wii music. I can see myself winning a bicycle race on Wii Sports resort or making my brother’s Mii look as ugly as possible to “Kluges I” and “Dionysian State.”
However, immediately after these songs, the album changes tones, to a more jazzy-pop hybrid. This is what I love about Mild High Club, I couldn't put a label on what type of music they play. Google describes it as “psychedelic pop,” which is accurate to an extent, but their ability to combine different forms of music and make this psychedelic hybrid and have it somehow work is astonishing.
That being said, I won’t be finding myself dancing to their music or heading to a concert of theirs anytime soon. To me, they are studying music. Music that is engaging but not too engaging and will slowly drift into the background as I write an essay or memorize nomenclature. It’s happy and calming music, something gravelly needed when I struggle to assign NMR signals in my organic chemistry homework.