Jason Scott & The High Heat Throw Out the Rulebook on ‘Play Boy’
Review by Lauren Page | @LiveWithLP
There’s really no cooler way of putting this: Jason Scott & The High Heat might just be the coolest group of ‘Okla-homies’ I’ve ever met - and their latest record, Play Boy, feels like the band at their most fearless yet.
From the opening seconds of Fast As I Can Crawl, subtlety is very much off the table. This is the kind of song that makes you want to pull on a pair of boots, find the nearest dive bar and kick the doors open on arrival. It’s gritty, raw and packed with swagger - and within one track, Play Boy has already made its intentions very clear.
What becomes increasingly apparent, though, is that Jason Scott & The High Heat have absolutely no interest in staying in one musical lane.
Shit Show, Too Good Too Bad and Highway Robbery barrel through the early stages of the record with the kind of foot-tapping, jukebox-ready energy that feels built for a packed bar on a Friday night. There’s grit to it, but also an undeniable groove; the band know when to let loose without sacrificing the storytelling underneath it all.
Then Roll Me All The Way and Willie, Waylon & Waltzes start pulling Play Boy somewhere else entirely.
The latter in particular leans into a more traditional, old-school Americana sound, trading some of the record’s earlier rough edges for something warmer, freer and almost spiritual. On an album that could quite easily become chaotic with this much genre-hopping, it instead highlights one of The High Heat’s biggest strengths: they can move between sounds without losing their identity.
That becomes the running theme of Play Boy.
A Goodbye Moon gives the record room to breathe before All This Pain and What Do You Know About Love bring back some of that earlier swagger. Then comes Cowboy Cold Beer, taking us straight into Western territory and proving, once again, that trying to neatly categorise Jason Scott & The High Heat is probably a losing battle.
Country? Americana? Honky-tonk? Rock? There are flashes of all of it here - sometimes within the space of a few songs.
Somehow, it ABSOLUTELY works.
When Love Tries to Hurt You and How to Get Away With Murder pull things back again, allowing the songwriting and musicianship behind The High Heat to take centre stage. That might actually be what makes Play Boy such an interesting listen: underneath all the swagger and genre-bending is a seriously accomplished band who know exactly when to push forward and when to let a song breathe.
But one of my favourite moments arrives right at the end.
If Heaven Had A Honky Tonk feels like the perfect closer. Knowing Jason Scott’s former practicing background adds another layer to the track, but even without that context, there’s something beautifully fitting about ending an album this wild, colourful and unapologetic by imagining what the party might look like on the other side.
That organ at the end? An absolute treat for the ears.
Compared with American Grin, Play Boy feels like a huge step forward. It’s bolder, stranger, groovier and seemingly far less concerned with fitting neatly into anybody else’s definition of what this music should sound like.
That’s exactly why I like it.
Whether you want gritty honky-tonk, old-school country storytelling, Western swagger or a funky, soulful detour into Americana, you’ll probably find it somewhere on Play Boy.
Jason Scott & The High Heat haven't just thrown different genres at a record for the sake of it; they've built a sound that feels increasingly and unmistakably their own.
If this is what happens when the ‘Okla-homies’ are let loose creatively, long may it continue.
Play Boy by Jason Scott & The High Heat is out now
Read my chat with Jason Scott here