By K.D. Norris
ken@wktv.org
You have to appreciate musicians who understand the power of falsetto, the right blend of songs to create and to cover, and the perfection of a venue with superb acoustics.
So there will be a lot to appreciate when Whitney, busy on the road in support of their late 2019 release Forever Turned Around, visit Grand Rapids’ Fountain Street Church’s sanctuary for a concert Sunday, Feb. 16, at 7 p.m., with CHAI opening.
At the end of the busy tour schedule to end 2019 and begin 2020, bouncing from their Chicago home to the United Kingdom, and then from Miami to Montreal, the duo to could not have picked a more perfect place to end their current sojourn that the renown acoustic setting of Fountain Street.
Restlessness, in fact, is “at the heart of Whitney’s resonant and stunning sophomore album Forever Turned Around,” according to supplied material. “As Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek realized over the past three years, life can change drastically. Priorities shift, relationships evolve, home can become far away, and even when luck momentarily works out, there’s still that underlying search for something better.”
Following the success of their 2016 debut release, Light Upon The Lake, the pair have relied on their partnership as they hit the road for what, at times, seems like an endless tours across the world.
“Our friendship has kept us going even though so much has happened in the years since we started the band,” Ehrlich said in supplied material.
Whitney has long been a full-fledged band with keyboardist Malcolm Brown, rhythm guitarist Ziyad Asrar, guitarist Print Choteau, bassist Josiah Marshall, and trumpeter Will Miller backing them live.
But Ehrlich and Kakacek are the heart and soul of Whitney.
Both in their mid-twenties, living through the usual life’s ups and downs, “they’ve found home through themselves, their romantic relationships, and their friends, (but) there’s an uneasiness that comes from stability — as evidenced by Ehrlich’s vocals on “Valleys (My Love)”: “There’s fire burning in the trees / Maybe life is the way it seems”.
In its 10 songs, Forever Turned Around allows Ehrlich and Kakacek to “skeptically yet masterfully navigate questions of mortality, doubt, love, and friendship in a grander scope than they’ve attempted before. It’s an album about partnership — romantic, familial and communal, but most importantly a love in friendship: the bonds between two best friends and creative partners and the joy and stress that comes with it.”
On “Used To Be Lonely”, Ehrlich sings: ‘Well it made no sense at all / Until you came along.”
Forever Turned Around came together over several sessions across the country and the world tour, with its earliest material written during tour dates in Lisbon, Portugal. Though Ehrlich is Whitney’s lead singing drummer while Kakacek is the lead guitarist, when writing, both transcend their roles to piece together each offering lyrically and compositionally, they state.
“The way it ends up working is one of us comes up with a basic idea for a song and the other person serves as the foil to complicate that idea. We ask, ‘What can we change to make it more interesting?’,” says Kakacek. “A big thing for us is our ability to take criticism. We’re always open to new ideas.”
After a session with producers Bradley Cook (Bon Iver, Hand Habits) and Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty) helped color in the arrangements, the album came together when they reunited with original rhythm guitarist Asrar in his basement Chicago studio — the same place where they hashed out much of Light Upon The Lake. With Asrar’s help, songs like “Song For Ty” and “Forever Turned Around” effortlessly came together. There, the band enlisted Chicago musicians Lia Kohl and OHMME’s Macie Stewart to provide strings throughout the record.
While you and I can make our own judgement on the band’s sound and soundness, the New York Times rather appropriately says of the music on Forever Turned Around: “In writing and arranging, they favor natural imagery and sun-dappled brass; their frontman, Julien Ehrlich, applies his weightless falsetto to musings on human connection, often sounding melancholy but never morose.”
You, as I did, can make our own connection by viewing and hearing their music online: A sweet (visually and audibly) video of “Used To Be Lonely”, from the latest release, is available here. A sound only version of the cover of “Far, Far Away” is available on YouTube here.
But seeing them, hearing them, at Fountain Street Church will undoubtedly exceed all expectations.
Tickets are $30 ($35 at the door on the night of the concert). For more information on the show, produced in partnership with WYCE and The Pyramid Scheme, visit here.
