Highnoon debuts with the lush indiepop set Semi Sweet
After sharing the single “Lens” a few weeks ago, Philly singer-songwriter Kennedy Freeman is back with their first full-length release as Highnoon. The nine-track album Semi Sweet is out now on Bandcamp; produced by Soft Idiot’s Justin Roth, it’s a lush collection of soft bedroom pop that introduces Highnoon as one of Philly’s best new acts.
In their first interview as Highnoon, Freeman spoke to GoldFlakePaint‘s Tom Johnson about the process of writing music and establishing the new project. A graduate of Temple University, Freeman became familiar with the local music scene while in college, before picking up a guitar and starting to write their own songs. Alex G covers and voice memo demos soon gave way to the fully recorded songs you hear on Semi Sweet.
Freeman describes the new LP as a coming-of-age record inspired by the highs and lows of her changing emotions. “I was experiencing so many good things for the first time and then I got really disillusioned about it all at once,” she shares. “A lot of these songs though were emotional dump-sites even though it may not sound too emo at face value. I would have a few things I was messing around with on the guitar and I would just keep playing until whatever was bothering me kinda spilled out.”
Freeman also talks about finding Highnoon’s place in Philly’s music community, which struggles from a lack of diversity. A founder of the radical black art collective Bad Apple Commune, she says that “we wanted to create a space where we uplift one another while also giving other black people cool house shows to go to where they won’t have to worry about being the only black person there or deal with micro-aggressions.”
Listen to Semi Sweet below.