{"id":39532,"date":"2017-05-09T15:45:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T21:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=39532"},"modified":"2017-05-09T15:47:48","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T21:47:48","slug":"hang-out-with-whitney-at-proud-larrys-may-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/hang-out-with-whitney-at-proud-larrys-may-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Hang Out with Whitney at Proud Larrys’ May 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ascendant Chicago<\/strong> band Whitney<\/strong> is riding the critical success of their debut album, Light Upon the Lake<\/em>, out now on Secretly Canadian<\/strong>. The group has seen a meteoric rise to the spotlight. Having received coverage from every major outlet and headlined countless festivals, these chicago boys are enjoying what most dream of. To say that Whitney is more than the sum of its parts would be a criminal understatement. Formed from the core of guitarist Max Kakacek<\/strong> (ex-Smith Westerns) and singing drummer Julien Ehrlich<\/strong> (ex-Unknown Mortal Orchestra), the band itself is something bigger, something visionary, something neither of them could have accomplished alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whitney was born from a series of laid-back early-morning songwriting sessions during one of the harshest winters in Chicago history, after Ehrlich and Kakacek reconnected\u2014first as roommates splitting rent in a small Chicago apartment and later as musical collaborators passing the guitar and the lyrics sheet back and forth. The duo wrote frankly about the break-ups they were enduring and the breakdowns they were trying to avoid. Each served as the other\u2019s most brutal critic and most sympathetic confessor, a sounding board for the hard truths that were finding their way into new songs like the aforementioned \u201cNo Woman.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In exorcising their demons they conjured something else, something much more benign\u2014a third presence, another personality in the music, which they gave the name Whitney. They left it singular to emphasize its isolation and loneliness. Says Kakacek, \u201cWe were both writing as this one character, and whenever we were stuck, we\u2019d ask, \u2018What would Whitney do in this situation?\u2019 We personified the band name into this person, and that helped a lot. We wrote the record as though one person were playing everything. We purposefully didn\u2019t add a lot of parts and didn\u2019t bother making everything perfect, because the character we had in mind wouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In those imperfections lies the music\u2019s humanity. Whilst they demoed and toured the new songs, they became more aware of the perfect imperfections of the songs, and needing to strike the right balance, they eventually made the trek out to California<\/strong>, where they recorded with Foxygen<\/strong> frontman and longtime friend, Jonathan Rado<\/strong>. They slept in tents in Rado\u2019s backyard, ate the same breakfast every morning at the same diner in the remote, desolate, and completely un-rock n\u2019 roll San Fernando Valley<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

These ten songs on Light Upon the Lake<\/em> sound like they could have been written at any time in the last fifty years. Ehrlich and Kakacek emerge as imaginative and insightful songwriting partners, impressive in their scope and restraint as they mold classic rock lyricism into new and personal shapes without sound revivalist or retro.<\/span><\/p>\n

Things have exploded for Whitney in a year, and time on the road meant that even Chicago feels different now. But they can still retreat into their songs, snapshots of changing seasons that will always be comforting. \u201cThis time last year we were trying to prove ourselves,\u201d says Julien. \u201cThen there was a switch and it got way bigger than we ever thought it would.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Whitney plays Proud Larry\u2019s stage on Wednesday, May 10. Alex Cameron will open the show. Tickets can be purchased here<\/a>\u00a0or at the door the night of the show.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ascendant Chicago band Whitney is riding the critical success of their debut album, Light Upon the Lake, out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":33422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7887],"tags":[5,642,4,53,753,8486],"class_list":["post-39532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-music","tag-mississippi","tag-ms","tag-oxford","tag-proud-larrys","tag-tlv","tag-whitney"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/2016-05-02-whitney.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}