Increasing Our High, regardless of it not being a grunge record, still bears the marks of the surrounding scene. Between the album itself and Vasquez gruff, grunting growls, figuring the disc, at first glance, for a lost garage treasure would be difficult. Fitting so seamlessly into a modicum of genres, though, makes it all the more bizarre as to why the Night Kings didn’t wind up impacting a wider audience. Life’s tough. And so are these songs, mostly sticking to a mid or up tempo conception of the genre.
“Complaints Department” sports one of the most ferociously tiny and fractious sounding guitar solos ever put to record. There’re antecedents in the no wave scene and all those Back from the Grave bands, but Vasquez inserts the approach to noisome guitar through the guise of garagey song structures (bka pop). And for whatever reason, no one had really been doing that in the late eighties and early nineties. For as good as the Chesterfield Kings and all those Cali paisley bands were, for the most part, all involved stuck to pretty traditional conceptions of what a song should sound like – and more over what a guitar player in a garage band should sound like.
Detroit’s the Gories sit close to where Vasquez and his night marauders were sitting, all half tuned and ready to play as fast as any area-punk band. And while the Michigan staters enjoyed nonsensical guitar solos, Vasquez playing the only six string in his band makes all the difference. Anyway, the guy’s probably still kicking around in Seattle doing as he pleases, not wondering if his works are actually currently impacting listeners. They are. But Night Kings deserved a much wider audience. You can still buy a really cheap vinyl copy of Increasing Our High on the Sub Pop website. Not a bad way to spend seven bucks.