Review Summary: Your new 10th favourite band
I’ve stumbled upon White Lung last summer, rather randomly, looking for some catchy and spunky tunes to drown out the crushing dread of my feeble existence, and, seeing as the band only had 4 LP’s and I’m a sucker for a stylish black and white cover art, I’ve decided to start in chronological order with their 2010’s full-length debut “It’s The Evil”.
What strikes you immediately is the stylish ease with which those Canadian rascals plow through the seemingly dried out and unfertile field of canonical punk rock. Even though the band had changed their style over time, from the opening seconds of “Viva La Rat” you know that there’s a vision behind it all – and a rather cool vision at that. Brittle, messy-but-audible production carries an organic and breathing sound, consisting of an extremely understated but unflinchingly insistent rhythm section, yelpy charismatic female vocals that seem to hit notes more as a side-effect than as a real purpose and… the guitar.
Now, taking the existing drums, the bass and the vocals present on the record and dumping them with some old-school punk power-chord downstroking would’ve resulted in an utterly bland if somewhat passable ear fodder. But here comes the shining saving grace of “It’s The Evil” – the blistering twang of the guitar which is so driven on making these three-chord tunes interesting and memorable that it threatens to explode at any given minute. The noise-rock influenced guitar playing on this record is easily 50 percent of its charm and strength – the busy patterns, crawling up and down on the neck, constantly shifting melodies and phrases, alternative accentuation, broken chords and leads – all delivered in a white-hot glassy tone not unlike that of the more searing compositions by Sonic Youth. And all recorded with a single guitar player, a mr. Kenneth William, who makes it his duty to dominate the songs both sonically and musically and to provide the band with the much-needed identity.
Speaking of identity, props need to be given to the singer Mish Way-Barber, who comes off not like a parody or a throwback of an archetypical garage-punk female vocalist but rather encapsulates all the strong peculiarities of such an archetype; her voice is commanding yet fallible, her delivery is sloppy yet confident, and the snarly tone of her voice compliments the music very nicely.
Lastly there’s the rhythm section, comprised on this album of Anne-Marie Vassiliou on drums and Grady Mackintosh on bass. Now, the rhythm section does its job and, while listening to punk rock, one should be happy with that; but, given the awesome prowess of guitars and the swagger of the vocal performance, bass and drums can only serve as a backdrop to that, concerned with a simple task – do not f*ck up. And that is mostly the case, apart from a REALLY weird section at the start of “Two Seen” which seems to drop just a tiny-winy bit of pace when the intro breaks into the opening verse. Now, usually in punk rock it’s a good tactic to pick UP the pace even higher after the minimalistic drum-and-bass intro; but this microscopic lag really takes you out of the moment and gives food for thought about the musicianship of the rhythm-section as a whole.
Now, as far as the actual tunes go, none of those tracks would break into any Top-40 anywhere but neither of them are amelodic or devoid of groove. The songwriting on the album is consistent within itself, reliant for the most part on the free-range guitar extravagancies and the occasional shout-along from the singer; it doesn’t warrant any prime-time rotation but it firmly establishes the sound and feel of the band, which is more than most current up-and-coming punk bands manage.
When all is said and done, the positives of this 24-minute breeze outweigh its shortcomings and imperfections, especially for a debut. “It’s The Evil” is fun, melodic, punchy and reeks of all the 40-some years of punk history on its back without ever sounding too derivative; a sure listen to any punk, hardcore or noise rock aficionado.
