New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Spotify and Electric Lady Studios will release the final exciting EP from this year's exclusive slate of Live at Electric Lady recordings. To conclude this year's series, Indie-pop band Whitney will release an eight-track EP featuring re-imagined versions of several of their top hits, including, "BLUE," "Giving Up," "MEMORY," "No Woman," "REAL LOVE," "TWIRL," and "Valleys," as well as a cover of Beach House's "Other People."
Whitney's Live at Electric Lady EP comes on the heels of a busy year for the band, who is currently on an eight-city tour for their newly-released fourth studio album titled "SPARK."
As part of the Live at Electric Lady series, participating artists were invited to record their own compositions as well as cover songs by artists connected to the history of the legendary recording studio, resulting in truly unique recordings that showcase each artist's creativity and musical style. The high-quality live audio recordings are distributed exclusively on Spotify.
"It's wild to feel the history in that building. It clearly breeds productivity and imaginative performance. We took this as an opportunity to shape the arrangements of our songs around a super-talented string quartet, as well as stripping back one of our favorite
Beach House songs. We're beyond grateful for the experience and look forward to coming back."
The Live at Electric Lady series returned earlier this year with EPs from Indie sensations Remi Wolf, Father John Misty, MUNA, and
Perfume Genius.
Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek could hear the staggering differences in the songs they were writing for their third album as Whitney, SPARK-the buoyant drum loops, the effortless falsetto hooks, the coruscant keyboard lines. They suddenly sounded like a band reimagined, their once-ramshackle folk-pop now brimming with unprecedented gusto and sheen. But could they see it, too?
So in the ad hoc studio the
Chicago duo built in the living room of their rented Portland bungalow, a shared 2020 escape hatch amid breakups and lockdowns, Julien and Max decided to find out.
Somewhere between midnight and dawn every night, their brains refracted by the late hour and light psychedelics, they'd play their latest creations while a hardware store disco ball spun overhead and slowed-down music videos from megastars spooled silently on YouTube.
Did their own pop songs-so much more immediate and modern than their hazy origins-fit such big-budget reels? "We'd come to the conclusion we weren't going to be filming Super 8 videos to this stuff anymore," Julien remembers with a grin. "How about something more hi-fi, cinematic?" When the footage and the tunes linked, Julien and Max knew they had done it, that they'd finally found Whitney's sound.
SPARK reintroduces Whitney as a contemporary syndicate of classic pop, its dozen imaginative and endearing tracks wrapping fetching melodies around paisley-print Dilla beats and luxuriant electronics.
What's more, Whitney reduces three years of extreme emotional highs and lows into 38 brisk but deep minutes, each of these 12 tracks a singable lesson in what it is they (and, really, we) have all survived.
However surprising it may sound, SPARK is less a radical reinvention for Whitney than an honest accounting of how it feels when you move out of your past and into your present, when you take the next steps of your lives and careers at once and without apology. SPARK maintains the warmth and ease of Whitney's early work; these songs glow with the newness of now.
Listen closely, and you'll notice frequent references to smoke and fire throughout SPARK, itself a double entendre for inspiring something new or burning down the old. Max and Julien were indeed in Portland for the Fall of 2020, when smoke from nearby fires choked the city at record levels.
It was terrifying and tragic, but they pressed on. "We found a way to live while the world was burning/Real life was caving in," Julien sings almost merrily during "BACK THEN," an anthem for finding out what's on the other side of hardship.
In these dire days, scientists speak increasingly of serotiny, an evolutionary miracle that causes some trees to release seeds only amid a season of fire. That is how SPARK often feels-Whitney's circumstances were so fraught on so many levels that they hung "the past...out to dry" and began again, finding a fresh version of themselves, their relationship, and their band after the blaze.
Max and Julien are back in
Chicago now, sharing a cozy walkup with a little studio, where they're already building songs for the next Whitney album. They're both in happy romances, too. Now that they let the past burn, everything is new for Max and Julien. SPARK is not only Whitney's best album; it is an inspiring testament to perseverance and renewal, to best friends trusting each other enough to carry one another to the other side of this season of woe.
UPCOMING TOUR DATES AND CITIES
Thu. Dec. 8 - Columbus, OH @ Newport
Music Hall
Fri. Dec. 9 -
Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore
Silver Spring
Sat. Dec. 10 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Sun. Dec. 11 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
Wed. Dec. 14 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit
Thu. Dec. 15 - Toronto, ON @
Phoenix Theatre
Fri. Dec. 16 - Detroit, MI @ The Crofoot
Wed. Dec. 21 - Chicago, IL @
Thalia Hall
Thu. Dec. 22 - Chicago, IL @
Thalia Hall
Fri. Dec. 23 - Chicago, IL @
Thalia Hall
