Whitney :: Small Talk
Photo: Alexa Viscius
Photo: Alexa Viscius
Since the release of 2016’s monumental classic “Light Upon The Lake,” the Chicago-based outfit Whitney has effortlessly established a unique place in the world of independent music amongst their critical contemporaries and poetic peers over the last decade. Blending the breathtaking elements of The Band with the sophisticated softness of the Laurel Canyon greats, the group has managed to overcome the industry’s landscape of intensity, while simultaneously planting a flowing flag in the rich concrete of Chi-town’s captivating culture. Consisting of its creative constants, Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek, former members of Smith Westerns and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the dynamic duo has returned with perhaps their most intimate and vibrantly vast body of work to date, “Small Talk.” A lush and lingering effort that spiritually shifts into haunting harmonies one minute, and breaks out in an almost athletic atmosphere the next, Whitney has landed on the sonic shores of seasonal significance with great prowess. Where the whispering waters crash against the ancient rolling rocks of their creative castle walls, the duo reconnects with its revolutionary roots by settling back into the band’s DIY methods of madness like they had done during a completely different time and place earlier in their career, while simultaneously overcoming elements of despair, collective chaos, industry, self-doubt, and several other factors that, at the end of the day, make a band much more resilient than they could ever imagine.
Photo: Alexa Viscius
“It’s been almost 11 years since Max and I started writing the first Whitney songs, and although I never could have predicted that this creative partnership would go on to shape over one-third of my entire life, I feel like this album does a beautiful job of identifying why it has.”
Joined by friends and bandmates Ziyad Asrar, who mixed, engineered, and co-produced the album, JJ Kirkpatrick, Whitney Johnson, Macie Stewart, and several others, “Small Talk” is as compelling as the community that helped build its brilliance, while investing in the harmonious history that is Whitney. Across the album’s eleven tracks, a narrative begins to unfold like some fragile spring flower stretching its precious petals as the first signal of summer warmth spreads across the morning sky in all its epic essence. Combining the lyrical landscape with the melodic mountain view that resides in the background, awaiting those curious eyes to ponder its never-ending beauty, the band casts its most spiritual spells above its prehistoric peaks in hopes of lighting the way for those who’ve been lost during this painful purgatory we call reality. What makes this album in particular so electrifying and expansive compared to previous works isn’t so much the musicianship, even though that has grown exponentially into this extraterritorial beacon of liberating light, but the overall personality of the precious cargo contained within the cosmic craft itself. We tend to forget that people make these things. And as a person on the other side of it all, we simply, and without hesitation, judge based on a whole system of emotions, opinions, and sometimes thoughtless taste, which, at the end of the day, end up casting a shadow over the efforts expressed by others. Whitney has become a revolving door of optimism since the early days, and what a pleasure it’s been to watch them grow and eagerly expand into this well-oiled machine of melodic mastery.
Photo: Alexa Viscius
