White Whale
WWI
Release Date: Jul 25, 2006
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Merge
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Album Review: WWI by White Whale
Very Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Matt Suggs has been in the indie rock game for a long time. Starting with Butterglory in the mid-'90s, then moving on with a couple of fine, understated solo albums in the early 2000s, he has turned out nothing but high-quality product. His new group, White Whale, continues the run of excellent releases. Teaming with ex-Get Up Kid Robert Pope and three members of the Higher Burning Fire (John Anderson, Zack Holland, Dustin Than Kinsey), Suggs leaves understatement behind on WWI.
Based on rating 6.0/10
White Whale is as straightforward as they come. Or perhaps not. The band's debut, WWI, is the proggiest thing to come out of Kansas since, I suppose, Kansas, but it's balanced by a bracing intellectualism. It's a slightly confusing listen, but the result isn't necessarily confused. WWI's inception ….
Opinion: Excellent
There's a wild hair of weirdness running right through White Whale's first album, rupturing what might be relatively accessible indie guitar rock with bizarre images, sudden shouts and a sort of rock-opera narrative with a mysterious Admiral at the center. Consider how the album starts. Against a driving, hail-on-windshield sort of beat, couched in reverberating masses of guitar drama, Matt Suggs ventures his first two lines of lyrics.
'WWI'
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