Paradise (May 2016, Domino), is White Lung's best-produced, and most ambitious record yet. Right off the bat, it's the classic White Lung sound we love, but with more variation, nuance, and with a bend slightly more toward the exploratory. I love it, I've been listening to it all day today. It's a brand new album, with a mostly brand new sound—White Lung has few contemporaries, thanks in large part to their guitarist Kenneth William. As I understand it, he wrote most of the material here, and worked really hard with the producer to give this album its sound. They had a mind to modernity, of which I'm always a big fan. The past sucked. We can do better, with music, with everything. White Lung personifies that future-facing mentality here on Paradise.
Let's get this out of the way: the most tiresome part of the album, for me, is that vocalist Mish Barber-Way's vocal style isn't very expansive, and doesn't really ever change. I'd personally like to hear her expand her range, maybe try some different vocal styles, or just add some harmony (which, to her credit, she does on "Narcoleptic"—subtly, with fifth and octave harmonies). She uses the tactic of letting her notes fall at the end of her lines a lot, almost to the point of overuse.
But the thing is, Barber-Way's vocal style works for White Lung—William is so all-over-the-place on his guitar that for Barber-Way to hog all the mix with constant vocalizing wouldn't work. Not only that, but it's her vocal style that's been primarily responsible, in my opinion, for rocketing this band onto the map of important musical artists of our time. She's brought me to tears a few times with her plain-as-day, emotion-slightly-hid-behind-raw-anger-and-boredom delivery. William's guitar playing comes in second.
So I'm not sure what kind of constructive criticism to give White Lung, and really, I wouldn't want them to change what they're doing in the slightest. To change it up would be to sacrifice this sweet, sweet vibe they have going. White Lung sounds like no other. It's unfair of fans to expect an artist to bend to their will—indeed, it should fuel the artist's fire burning against persecution and accepted human insanity, inspiring her to make the greatest art in protest that she can, because people really listen to this stuff, and music can move people in important ways. The artist cannot be shackled—to do so is only to deprive ourselves of what we love, this life-nourishing thing we call music. To tell the artist, "I like it, but this, this, and this sucks," isn't always helpful. Sure, some albums suck, like those written and produced by committee, and need lots of constructive criticism, or to be burned, but with Paradise, it's not necessary.
White Lung's handed us a wonderful album. They don't need their goddam hands held in order to bring us a smashing good time.
Take Weezer's Weezer (White Album), make it from an underground band with real talent, add more punk to their pop-punk sensibility, remove the annoyance, whining quality, and lowest-common-denominator pandering, and you've got Paradise. The production between these two albums is just as effective, to me, and I'd be willing to admit that Weezer sunk a fair bit more into the recording than for which White Lung had the fundage.
Paradise is somehow both well-produced and crystal clear. Most of these guitar lines are dirty, but you can hear them clear as day. The opening song, "Dead Weight," a tune about miscarriage, starts with an ominous dual thud, and then promptly throws you into a maelstrom of furious and dirty guitars. The song is sad, heavy, youthful, realistic, bitter, feminist, and modern. There you have White Lung personified.
They take punk to the next evolution, the next logical level. They're an outgrowth of pure fury, controlled. Like Ayn Rand describing the act of smoking a cigarette as man controlling a substance as raging as fire, White Lung takes the infuriating experience of being not just a woman, but any person in this oft-cruel world, who likes being friendly, but also just has shit thrown at them all the time. Couple that with self-doubt and a disbelief that this is the way things are, and you get bitter people. White Lung takes that feeling and expresses it maturely, in a healing fashion. They make me want to friendly-mosh. Mosh with pure friendliness. Can moshing spread flowers instead of bruises? They make me want to fuck shit up, and love people at the same time. How do they do that? White Lung is magic, is all I can say. Love and bruises can go together, as long as it's consensual.
I've liked White Lung for a long time. Paradise satisfies me. This is not the first time I've listened to them like, a lot. They've always been good.
Now let me dive into a problem I have with the production, which probably isn't the band's fault—Barber-Way's voice is definitely mixed louder than all the other instruments, which grinds my gears. I wish her vocal tracks were mixed a little more down among the other instruments. This isn't to say she's too loud, or that I can't hear something under her—the overall mix is clear. I'm saying the vocals are a touch too loud. They're doubled most of the time too—which I love to do myself, and which I hear my favorite bands like Ghost doing all the time—but it makes the vocal portion of the song louder. The more vocal tracks you add, the louder it all gets. So it just becomes a game of mixing.
Vocal doubling and harmonizing—simply combining voices—makes for a wonderful sound. It makes the human voice sound greater-than, through the maaaaagic of studio technologyyyyy! That multiple voices can come from one person is amazing in and of itself. What an age in which we live. Take the technique of vocal doubling: you can make a single voice more varied and take on more qualities to unpack for the listener, making for a greater depth of character, emotion, and power, than one voice alone provides—just by having the artist sing exactly the same thing twice. Neither take will sound exactly like the other—there will be subtle variations in pitch, volume, and vibrato in different spots. Combining them—if performed well by the artist, and patched together adequately by the producer—will produce beautiful, unexpected twists, voices twirling together like a braid, strands intertwining, becoming more than the sum of their parts, a thing of pure beauty. Isn't the human voice wonderful? This is why, before recording technology existed, humans sang together.
And that's only part of the hypothetical song—you also get guitars! And drums!
On Paradise, the recording studio was obviously top-notch, and all three band members knocked it out of the park, including their ferocious drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou, whom I've not yet mentioned. She is a killer on that kick pedal, and a machine of timeliness. I'd beat ass to have a drummer like her in a band.
It looks like White Lung lost their bassist, and continued on as a power trio. The sound really works for them—this is not to say that I didn't like the bassist before. Indeed, I thought she added some stability under William's usually raucous, busy guitar work. The guy is all over the fretboard, never sitting still. His style reminds me of 80s rock and metal, specifically like Ratt, or early Ozzy with Randy Rhoads. Yes, I just compared the White Lung guitar player with Randy Rhoads, #dealwithit. He doesn't solo as fast or use as many power chords or have the blues influence Rhoads did (thank god), but he takes the notes-flung-at-you-like-it's-nothing style that Rhoads made sweet, and takes it in new directions. Indeed, I have a hard time thinking up contemporaries for William's sound. I want to mention Jimi Hendrix, too—that guy's rhythm work was more like soloing. That's what William's style reminds me of—rhythm lines so complex, fluid, and moving so far around, never in a pocket, that it becomes like a different kind of soloing, a new form of guitar solo, as rhythm line.
Great job, White Lung. The songs on Paradise explore new styles—I like the slower moments, but they don't make me wish for less heavy moments. Cuz all your heavy moments are gold. It makes me want to get rowdy.
Thanks for working so hard, too, you band, you! I really appreciate all the effort it obviously took to write all these songs, arrange them, communicate them to bandmates, make into cohesive ideas, physically play them, in pieces at first and then practicing as whole songs, making them stage- and studio-ready. Then, paying for studio time, spending time recording, and then spending all that time in post, mixing, before sending it off to the mastering folks and being like, 'hope y'all don't fuck it up, this is my baby!'
To say that a band is stuck in a rut is to forget our place as peon fans. They're the gods who give us the music. All we have to do is consume it—we don't even have to. It's not exactly being flung in our faces—we choose to explore the wonders of the Internet, without which we have very little access to music these days. Physical copies of music are going away, being replaced with streaming services. So for White Lung to consistently focus on their sound, narrow or expansive as it may be—that's their choice—we're all the more fortunate, because we get to listen to it. Instead of trying to customize everything, and criticize, and piss and moan, I'd rather be happy with what I get. Because I know these guys aren't going to be able to live off of White Lung proceeds for the rest of their lives. Music's not the money-maker it once was—when criticism was slightly more justified, I feel. Slightly.
And in this day and age, people are quick to criticize, roughly. Comment boards and Twitter are a bastion for idle chatter and in-the-moment, forgetful slandering and death- and torture- and rape-wishing upon people for absolutely less-than-deserving reasons. Humanity's awfulness is laid bare on the Internet, presented before us on a platter, plain as day, obvious; what we've been avoiding as a human race for so long. Why do you think White Lung's pissed?
Rally behind them, my friends. White Lung represents the fight against hate.
Let's get this out of the way: the most tiresome part of the album, for me, is that vocalist Mish Barber-Way's vocal style isn't very expansive, and doesn't really ever change. I'd personally like to hear her expand her range, maybe try some different vocal styles, or just add some harmony (which, to her credit, she does on "Narcoleptic"—subtly, with fifth and octave harmonies). She uses the tactic of letting her notes fall at the end of her lines a lot, almost to the point of overuse.
But the thing is, Barber-Way's vocal style works for White Lung—William is so all-over-the-place on his guitar that for Barber-Way to hog all the mix with constant vocalizing wouldn't work. Not only that, but it's her vocal style that's been primarily responsible, in my opinion, for rocketing this band onto the map of important musical artists of our time. She's brought me to tears a few times with her plain-as-day, emotion-slightly-hid-behind-raw-anger-and-boredom delivery. William's guitar playing comes in second.
So I'm not sure what kind of constructive criticism to give White Lung, and really, I wouldn't want them to change what they're doing in the slightest. To change it up would be to sacrifice this sweet, sweet vibe they have going. White Lung sounds like no other. It's unfair of fans to expect an artist to bend to their will—indeed, it should fuel the artist's fire burning against persecution and accepted human insanity, inspiring her to make the greatest art in protest that she can, because people really listen to this stuff, and music can move people in important ways. The artist cannot be shackled—to do so is only to deprive ourselves of what we love, this life-nourishing thing we call music. To tell the artist, "I like it, but this, this, and this sucks," isn't always helpful. Sure, some albums suck, like those written and produced by committee, and need lots of constructive criticism, or to be burned, but with Paradise, it's not necessary.
White Lung's handed us a wonderful album. They don't need their goddam hands held in order to bring us a smashing good time.
Take Weezer's Weezer (White Album), make it from an underground band with real talent, add more punk to their pop-punk sensibility, remove the annoyance, whining quality, and lowest-common-denominator pandering, and you've got Paradise. The production between these two albums is just as effective, to me, and I'd be willing to admit that Weezer sunk a fair bit more into the recording than for which White Lung had the fundage.
Paradise is somehow both well-produced and crystal clear. Most of these guitar lines are dirty, but you can hear them clear as day. The opening song, "Dead Weight," a tune about miscarriage, starts with an ominous dual thud, and then promptly throws you into a maelstrom of furious and dirty guitars. The song is sad, heavy, youthful, realistic, bitter, feminist, and modern. There you have White Lung personified.
They take punk to the next evolution, the next logical level. They're an outgrowth of pure fury, controlled. Like Ayn Rand describing the act of smoking a cigarette as man controlling a substance as raging as fire, White Lung takes the infuriating experience of being not just a woman, but any person in this oft-cruel world, who likes being friendly, but also just has shit thrown at them all the time. Couple that with self-doubt and a disbelief that this is the way things are, and you get bitter people. White Lung takes that feeling and expresses it maturely, in a healing fashion. They make me want to friendly-mosh. Mosh with pure friendliness. Can moshing spread flowers instead of bruises? They make me want to fuck shit up, and love people at the same time. How do they do that? White Lung is magic, is all I can say. Love and bruises can go together, as long as it's consensual.
I've liked White Lung for a long time. Paradise satisfies me. This is not the first time I've listened to them like, a lot. They've always been good.
Now let me dive into a problem I have with the production, which probably isn't the band's fault—Barber-Way's voice is definitely mixed louder than all the other instruments, which grinds my gears. I wish her vocal tracks were mixed a little more down among the other instruments. This isn't to say she's too loud, or that I can't hear something under her—the overall mix is clear. I'm saying the vocals are a touch too loud. They're doubled most of the time too—which I love to do myself, and which I hear my favorite bands like Ghost doing all the time—but it makes the vocal portion of the song louder. The more vocal tracks you add, the louder it all gets. So it just becomes a game of mixing.
Vocal doubling and harmonizing—simply combining voices—makes for a wonderful sound. It makes the human voice sound greater-than, through the maaaaagic of studio technologyyyyy! That multiple voices can come from one person is amazing in and of itself. What an age in which we live. Take the technique of vocal doubling: you can make a single voice more varied and take on more qualities to unpack for the listener, making for a greater depth of character, emotion, and power, than one voice alone provides—just by having the artist sing exactly the same thing twice. Neither take will sound exactly like the other—there will be subtle variations in pitch, volume, and vibrato in different spots. Combining them—if performed well by the artist, and patched together adequately by the producer—will produce beautiful, unexpected twists, voices twirling together like a braid, strands intertwining, becoming more than the sum of their parts, a thing of pure beauty. Isn't the human voice wonderful? This is why, before recording technology existed, humans sang together.
And that's only part of the hypothetical song—you also get guitars! And drums!
On Paradise, the recording studio was obviously top-notch, and all three band members knocked it out of the park, including their ferocious drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou, whom I've not yet mentioned. She is a killer on that kick pedal, and a machine of timeliness. I'd beat ass to have a drummer like her in a band.
It looks like White Lung lost their bassist, and continued on as a power trio. The sound really works for them—this is not to say that I didn't like the bassist before. Indeed, I thought she added some stability under William's usually raucous, busy guitar work. The guy is all over the fretboard, never sitting still. His style reminds me of 80s rock and metal, specifically like Ratt, or early Ozzy with Randy Rhoads. Yes, I just compared the White Lung guitar player with Randy Rhoads, #dealwithit. He doesn't solo as fast or use as many power chords or have the blues influence Rhoads did (thank god), but he takes the notes-flung-at-you-like-it's-nothing style that Rhoads made sweet, and takes it in new directions. Indeed, I have a hard time thinking up contemporaries for William's sound. I want to mention Jimi Hendrix, too—that guy's rhythm work was more like soloing. That's what William's style reminds me of—rhythm lines so complex, fluid, and moving so far around, never in a pocket, that it becomes like a different kind of soloing, a new form of guitar solo, as rhythm line.
Great job, White Lung. The songs on Paradise explore new styles—I like the slower moments, but they don't make me wish for less heavy moments. Cuz all your heavy moments are gold. It makes me want to get rowdy.
Thanks for working so hard, too, you band, you! I really appreciate all the effort it obviously took to write all these songs, arrange them, communicate them to bandmates, make into cohesive ideas, physically play them, in pieces at first and then practicing as whole songs, making them stage- and studio-ready. Then, paying for studio time, spending time recording, and then spending all that time in post, mixing, before sending it off to the mastering folks and being like, 'hope y'all don't fuck it up, this is my baby!'
"So desolate, so desolate, SOOooooo!"
To say that a band is stuck in a rut is to forget our place as peon fans. They're the gods who give us the music. All we have to do is consume it—we don't even have to. It's not exactly being flung in our faces—we choose to explore the wonders of the Internet, without which we have very little access to music these days. Physical copies of music are going away, being replaced with streaming services. So for White Lung to consistently focus on their sound, narrow or expansive as it may be—that's their choice—we're all the more fortunate, because we get to listen to it. Instead of trying to customize everything, and criticize, and piss and moan, I'd rather be happy with what I get. Because I know these guys aren't going to be able to live off of White Lung proceeds for the rest of their lives. Music's not the money-maker it once was—when criticism was slightly more justified, I feel. Slightly.
And in this day and age, people are quick to criticize, roughly. Comment boards and Twitter are a bastion for idle chatter and in-the-moment, forgetful slandering and death- and torture- and rape-wishing upon people for absolutely less-than-deserving reasons. Humanity's awfulness is laid bare on the Internet, presented before us on a platter, plain as day, obvious; what we've been avoiding as a human race for so long. Why do you think White Lung's pissed?
Rally behind them, my friends. White Lung represents the fight against hate.
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