Rock Album Review: Whitney's Debut

Light Upon the Lake is little known Chicago band Whitney’s debut album and has come out to be one of the best rock albums of the year. They have asserted a certain old fashioned simplicity and musicality back to a modern music world that tends to be a little overzealous. The song writing duo of Julien Ehrlich (lead singer and drummer) and Max Kakacek, both formerly of the Smith Westerns, have produced an album with simple soft lyrics mostly about a lonely guy who drinks too much and recently broke up with his girlfriend. This is by no means a break up album; however, it is an album with a lot of upbeat hopeful tracks that spread this positive feeling that it will all be okay. The album’s simplicity shows off it’s fun side as just some normal people that really enjoy making music. Whitney is a seven piece outfit that includes brass and strings that can captivate a live show with their intimate and patient sound.The album includes a few slow intimate songs such as opening track “No Woman” and title track “Light Upon the Lake” that maintain this somber drawn out flow of guy just sort of wading through the muck of a slightly disappointing life. These slower intimate songs act as bridges in the album to more upbeat jam songs like “The Falls,” “Dave’s Song,” and “No Matter Where We Go” that really drive the album. An interesting pocket of the album is the song “Red Moon” that is a short jazz infused excerpt and instrumental jam that bounces back and forth from horns to piano and drums. There aren’t really any holes on the album as all the songs hold true to their style and theme and provide some interesting musicality. The best song on the album is “Golden Day’s” that taps into something so real by singing “those golden days snuck away from us, that way you take things for granted and end up aching for it to come back on bad days, it’s a shame I can’t get it together now.” Whitney exposes that persona they were trying to emulate the whole album as a casual way of saying "what the fuck." “Golden Day’s” really excels because of its' ability to engage your mind with the deeper concept and to engage the body as Julien closes out the song with a chorus of “na na na na na’s” that make it all too tempting to belt it out alongside him and start dancing.Overall, Whitney has brought a fresh authentic sound to the world that doesn’t try to do too much. The band themselves has appropriately described their sound as country soul even though it probably falls under the rock/indie umbrella. Their feel good live shows are starting to bring on some recognition for their debut album and just recently Elton John proclaimed it as his favorite album of the year. What is the most appealing about this young band is that they are just normal guys making good music and depicting real things. The world can rejoice that they have a long and bright future ahead of them with really no limit on what they can do with their music and there’s definitely nothing better than a band that excels in a live performance setting.