MONTIS - High Horse

BIMM Manchester Weekly Features 1st Issue

Photos by SLS

A track that reminds of warm, morning sun on the face followed by tea and pancakes, High Horse evokes negative connotations from the title, but completely subverts this with a pleasant, easy-listening/lo-fi sound. MONTIS (aka Alex McCann and band) has released his third single of the year to gratifying success, achieving a minimum of 12,000 streams on any of his tracks.

The song itself features a classy arrangement of brass and percussion, with uplifting chords accompanied by McCann’s own deep and reassuring chest vocals. There’s something in the way the chorus twinkles and floats in that surrounds the whole track in a haze of satisfied contentment, making me want to doze off with an ice-cold drink and a face-full of golden sun.

As the meaning of ‘High Horse’ incites imagery of argumentative themes, the track’s major tonality could be read as being a sarcastic commentary; something personal to MONTIS that elicits such a well-thought out passive aggressive response. Of course, the other reading is that High Horse is simply a warm, kind-hearted track and, while a potentially less interesting and speculative option, it also makes me feel less guilty about wanting to relax to the track.

MONTIS’s album artwork is somewhat ironically inconsistent – something that some may criticise - providing different styles for each track, which is, however, something that his social media reflects well; a mix of heavily filtered images, some giving away little or making reference to themes that he aligns with. This shows me that McCann has used this imagery purposefully with intentions of not giving away too much about him and his alias. The fact that he has managed to achieve a consistent listener-base is an indicator that MONTIS is clearly one to keep an eye on, especially as live events return to our day-to-day.