“Whitney put the past behind them on SPARK, and that’s exactly what it sounds like.” —Esquire
“On SPARK, they sound like they’re clearing new paths for their own future.” — The FADER
“Across [SPARK], the duo sidestep their reputation for pastoral, folksy music and instead embrace playfulness and experimentation on their most opalescent, pop-leaning effort yet.” — UPROXX
“Somewhere between a natural evolution of their sound and a total reinvention of it, SPARK expands the idea of what the band is.” — The Ringer
Chicago indie stalwarts Whitney present their new single/visualizer, ‘Kansas.’ “Kansas” follows SPARK, “Whitney’s most dynamic album yet” (Stereogum), but emerges from the sessions of 2019’s beloved Forever Turned Around. Originally titled “Kansas Over My Shoulder,” the song rests atop finger-plucked guitar, with vocalist Julien Ehrlich’s signature falsetto gliding over kinetic and delicate production from Brad Cook, Jonathan Rado, Ziyad Asrar, and Whitney. “You know I’m just another daydreamer // Hanging from a moment,”
Ehrlich sings, each syllable propelling the track to wistful heights. “Darling I’ve been floating in a river // Wishing I could slow it.” The accompanying visualizer is a perfect encapsulation of the song’s candle-lit intimacy.
Of ‘Kansas,’ the band says: “We started ‘Kansas’ back in 2017 at the beginning of the Forever Turned Around writing sessions. The initial idea saw a couple different mutations but eventually we fully rewrote it into the title track for LP2. At some point during tour rehearsals in 2022 we decided to put the original unfinished ‘Kansas’ in the set to see how people would respond and it quickly became a centerpiece. So in March of this year we finished writing and recording ‘Kansas’ as it was originally imagined and we’re thrilled to finally release it.”
SPARK — the third album from the duo of Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek — maintains the warmth and ease of Whitney’s early work while presenting songs that glow with the newness of now. Upon its release, SPARK received a wealth of praise from FLOOD, Document Journal, Pitchfork and more. The release was preceded by a “trance-like and dreamy” (Uproxx) performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and was followed by a lengthy North American tour. Early this year, Whitney released “For A While,” a Light Upon The Lake era standalone that was praised by Paste as “an emblem of the first two Whitney records: sun-soaked and brimming with clean, airy guitars that contort delicately.”
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