BOSTON, MA [August 13, 2021] — A gentleman never overstays his welcome. And he also knows when it’s time for someone else to hit the road — figuratively and literally. That’s at the core of “High Time,” the cruising new single from glam-rock aesthete Gene Dante, set for release via H1 Massive on Friday, August 13. It’s the latest sonic seducer from Dante’s forthcoming October album DL/UX, and follows last month’s rousing ripper of a post-pandemic anthem, “She’s Outside.”
“Along my path, I’ve had a few people attach themselves to me under the premise of ‘helping,’” Dante says. “This ‘help’ turned out to be an attempt at subversion and control: positioning themselves between me and the rest of the world, leveraging their relationship with me to further their own aspirations. ‘High Time’ is about the moment you give this person the keys to the street.”
“High Time” is also guitar-pop euphoria coated in Dante’s signature style of modern glam and powderkeg rock and roll, a sexual exhale of cool that propels forward like a run in your favorite stocking at 3 a.m.. Dante boasted an air of “satisfaction and vindication” upon nailing “High Time’s” final studio take, bringing to life a song that began with a simple sample unearthed at the desk of producer John Eye’s Beach House Studios in Massachusetts.
“It all started during our mixing of a demo,” Dante admits. “John Eye was looping a random section of another of my songs. The loop became its own catchy groove, so I recorded a few seconds of it with my phone and ran off and fleshed it out to an entire song. As I wrote, I felt the ghost of the late, great Tom Petty over my shoulder. I’ve no idea if anyone will hear his influence in the song, but I do. John’s stellar production elevated the band’s tight AF performance.”
While “High Time” is a kiss-off for those who seek to suppress and oppress, it’s also a reflection for life in 2021, where the naysayers have platforms and the haters are celebrated. It’s a tough time to walk a straight line, and an even tougher time to keep an eye on the prize. But Dante channeled his glam-bam-alternative-ma’am upbringing into creating an infectious and delectable capital-J jam that gives the term “earworm” a stylized makeover. “High Time” is an aural cocktail doused in a glittery display of perseverance and self-reservation.
“It reinforces the idea that you can creatively mine the simplest idea or negative chapter,” Dante says. “I took miserable experiences and channelled them into something empowering and beautiful; a straw-into-gold moment.”
It also continues to set a tone for DL/UX, perhaps Dante’s most ambitious and rambunctious album to date. It’s a high-energy rock and roll joyride that connects the gutters to the galleries, the midnights to the noons, and the glory days to the gory days all through the sharpened lens of one of New England’s most gifted songwriters, storytellers, and showmen. It’s an album shaped by the life he lives and the lessons that unfold along the way, with the revolving cast of characters that come in and out of our shadowy escapades.
“The journey and challenges don’t change you, they reveal you,” Dante cautions. “They also reveal everyone around you. As you move forward, onward, and upward, for various reasons, people leave your life. There are times when it’s your own fault, and I will continually own, beat myself up over, and write about it. An equal amount of times it’s on others, and you can’t be afraid to call that out. This is a recurring theme on DL/UX.”
Come on in and find out. But don’t get in the way of Gene Dante.
