
North Highlands—the place, not the band—is, as Brenda Malvini puts it, “a gnarly suburb trapped in time. It sounds like a beautiful name but it’s not a beautiful place.” Located just outside of Sacramento, North Highlands once housed a military base, and also Brenda, who relocated to New York City as quickly as the town would let her out. She went to NYU, where the majority of North Highlands—we’re talking about the band now—also went, all of them “graduating or not graduating,” as they put it, a couple of years ago. Brenda was writing songs, but keeping them secret, until [...]