by LORRAINE CARPENTER

"Music is a spiritual thing for me," says High Dials singer/guitarist Trevor Anderson. "That sounds cheesy, but it's true. I'm trying to channel the big struggles we're all going through, and connect that to my own personal journey."

The journey has been a challenging one for the High Dials, and a satisfying trip for their fans, from the band's emergence as the Datsons in 1998 through their mod period, their name and lineup changes, to their gradual, ongoing rise above the radar across North America.

Anderson and his bandmates - Rishi Dhir (bass, backup vocals, sitar), Robbie MacArthur (guitar), Robb Surridge (drums) and Eric Doherty (keys) - release an album on June 7, their sophomore LP as the High Dials, their fourth including the Datsons' discography. The band's 2003 epic, pop-psychedelic concept album, A New Devotion, is a hard act to follow. However, their reliance on referencing their '60s heroes has abated in favour of a more refined, contemporary aesthetic that will probably broaden the High Dials' appeal. Anderson attributes the change to increased cohesion within the band, extra studio time, the passage of time in general, and upheaval in his personal life. That said, the record doesn't wallow in therapeutic venting or teary confessionals.

"In some ways, I'm trying to whittle away the really superficial personal aspects of [my writing] to make something very raw and transcendent," says Anderson. "A lot of songs deal with the way desires can take shape for things that don't really exist, and the realities that haunt the mind," he adds, explaining the album title, War of the Wakening Phantoms - he jokes that the band considered the names War of the Worlds and The Phantom Menace, only to discover they were taken.

To match its fantastical title, the album is adorned with an assemblage of drawings of knights, beasts, gods, angels, UFOs and war machines, like an elaborate collection of high school doodles, courtesy of Anderson and Seripop.

"We wanted an image to conjure up fairy tales or myths," he says, "without looking too much like Led Zeppelin."

With Hopewell at Main Hall on Saturday, June 4, 9 p.m., $10

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