HighSchool

HighSchool, the duo of Rory Trobbiani and Luke Scott, released their self-titled debut album on October 31, 2025 via [PIAS] Australia.

Produced by Ben Hillier (Blur, Depeche Mode) and Finn Bellingham (RIP Magic, Sam Akpro, Sunken), and recorded between London, Lewes (East Sussex), and Melbourne, HighSchool is an intoxicating delivery of '80s post-punk with reflections of alternative revivalism. Meticulous in its construction, the album is a vivid coming-of-age soundtrack that plays on the band’s name for its core theme, fusing post-punk and alternative revivalism across twelve deeply personal tracks.

With influences as wide as slowcore, Drain Gang-style hip hop, and the alt-rock steps of Alex G, the record sees the band further refine their signature sound as heard in their previously acclaimed EPs while simultaneously curating a new terrain that translates stages of life. Since first capturing attention in 2021 with their breakout Forever At Last EP and 2024 follow-up EP Accelerator, they’ve finely tuned a sound that ruminates on the sentimentalism of suburban adolescence and fleeting youth.

Of the release, HighSchool share “When you’re young and dumb, everything hits harder… love, hate, boredom, desire. It all feels sacred somehow. Then you grow up and it fades. Maybe that’s why everyone romanticises youth. This album is forty-two minutes of trying to feel that again.”

Including the previously released early-days rush ‘149’, euphoric tension of ‘Dipped’ and ode digital-age romance in ‘Sony Ericsson’, HighSchool is an album steeped in youthful restlessness. From tender moments of small town reflections in ‘American Aunty’ to the Beck and Pavement-influenced ‘Peter’s Room’, HighSchool’s wall of sound celebrates the undercurrents that run beneath seemingly ordinary teenage lives and suburban settings.

The second half of the album opens with 2000s-inflected focus track ‘One Lucky Man’, which the band reveal, “At its core, the song is about the tension between the life we try to build and the impulses that pull us off course. Discipline vs desire, stability vs fleeting pleasure. Written in the spirit of early-2000s indie rock, an era of hedonistic nights and sleazy excess, ‘One Lucky Man’ is about the rush of giving in and the quiet that comes after.” Adept at building deeply considered worlds, they channel inspired midwestern emo on ‘Making Out at the Skatepark’ and follow with the woozy tape-manipulated ‘Trope’, gothic sprawl of ‘Rhinoplasty’, the nostalgic junior Aussie Rules ode ‘Best and Fairest’ before Italo-disco fused album closer ‘Colt’; delivering an impressive listen with crystallised influences.

Following a stint living in London and cutting their teeth on the Windmill scene, their wall of sound traverses the alternative underground having made their mark internationally with shows in Australia, Europe, Japan and North America, tours alongside Wunderhorse, Sam Fender, Provoker and Chvrches, and renowned festival appearances at SXSW Austin, The Great Escape, All Points East, Wide Awake and Reeperbahn.

As a record that leans into the mythologised portrayals of school life in film and TV – images that usually rose-tint reality – HighSchool is a sonic and visual contribution to the long-running cultural story of youth.