Higher Grounds: audio fiction review
by Rhianna Stephenson
In 1993, rock singer Elle Harrison (Katy Yoder) was found dead at the Nashville coffee shop she ran with her three best friends. Thirty years later, a reporter interviews the women left behind to find out what really happened to Elle. This story follows these musicians’ lives, dreams and choices, from their childhood friendship to the day things fell apart. Produced by YellaBird Media and written and directed by Kimberly Conway, Higher Grounds is a prestige television-style podcast about women who survive. It’s ideal for book lovers, commuters, and women who wish QCODE Media made more fiction dramas.
It begins with the report of Elle’s death. Thirty years later, a reporter arrives at the Higher Grounds coffeehouse and the interviews begin. Sylvia Richardson (Laura Jane Jones), Roz Mitchell (Janice Lynn Sykes), Joni McKay (Cynthia Ergenbright) and Elle became friends as children from very different backgrounds. As they retell their lives, every character, from shy but talented Roz to charismatic Sylvia, protective Joni to child-star Elle, all come across as both glamorous and grounded.
The interview format lets the characters reflect on their history artistically, without over-explaining what they see. It’s unusual for a fiction podcast in some ways, with straight protagonists and personal stakes, but the characters’ relationships are its greatest strength. The loyalty between these four friends, their relationships with each other’s families, and Sylvia and Charles’ (Gervais Weekes) beautiful romance make the story engaging. Quiet tragedies and joyful victories alike feel believable (and hit hard) because the characters themselves do. Even though it takes a long time to get to Elle’s death, and she feels like a fairly minor character for the first few episodes, it shows how much their lives mattered.
Higher Grounds Episode 1 - Summer of '62
YellaBird Media cast professional, diverse, warm and likeable actors for this story. None of the characters are overacted or unbelievable. The cast members have little experience in podcasts, but plenty of degrees and experience in acting, theatre and music. They convincingly portray protagonists with rich histories and singular personalities, and even minor characters are complicated and believable. There’s no limit to how big they can act, and there’s one moment of screaming that might make listeners cry.
With multiple people working on audio, Higher Grounds also benefits from a professional theme song and natural sound design. There are enough sound effects to let listeners sink into the moment, without forgetting that they’re hearing memories. It’s not surround-sound; there’s no confusion of whether the noise you heard was in real life or not, but it’s good. On the other hand, there’s surprisingly little music for a podcast about musicians, and Higher Grounds often feels like the creators wanted to make a TV series instead. YellaBird describes itself as “cinematic” and the Centennial Park Parthenon, coffeehouse and characters beg to be shown onscreen. Still, it’s a good entry point for listeners new to fiction podcasts.
Overall, Higher Grounds isn’t the kind of LGBTQ+ or speculative fiction that indie podcasts are known and loved for. It also went in a slightly different direction than what the description implied: it’s far from Elle’s murder mystery. That seemed to be, though, a deliberate decision. It’s a character-driven story with talented actors and writing that never falls flat—and it shows all the ups and downs life has to offer.
Higher Grounds is a gripping, high-quality series following the lives of four women through times of church choirs and racial tension, high school crushes and the Vietnam War, friendship, musical success and tragedy. It has the polish of QCODE Media or The Harbingers, in a very different genre. For any podcast listener open to faux-documentaries or recent historical fiction, it’s a good place to start. For avid readers who liked Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies and want a free, full-cast story to play while they work, try this. It lacks the usual hallmarks of indie fiction podcasts, but the creators wanted to tell a story about women’s lives, and they succeeded.
