The first great upheaval in my musical tastes occurred when I escaped Redneck High and finally got some exposure to the sorts of things that rarely made top forty lists. Well, for a brief period of time they did, and then such music was called alternative, and then Clear Channel decided it didn't want us listening to decent music anymore, and so on. I digress. The second revolution in my musical tastes took place, predictably, when I signed on to be a college radio DJ.

The death of intelligent alternative and punk at the hands of the post-generation-X “X” movement in music had left me frankly bitter. When Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins became the last holdout against the forces of Greenday and the gradual disintegration of coherent progressive music, I started a slow retreat back into the seventies. I was rescued, thankfully, by the emergence of the college independent scene, (or at least my discovery of it,) by which I mean music you weren't likely to hear outside of college radio at the time (thanks to things like Neutral Milk Hotel and The Postal Service, this has changed modestly.)

The band Godspeed You Black Emperor was nothing short of an epiphany for me. They spearheaded a larger overall advance of brooding post-rock into my life, including Olivia Tremor Control, Mogwai, Tortoise and The Sea and Cake, Dirty Three, and Low. It might sound strange, but this whole era/genre of music solved a conundrum I think we all suffer through at one time or another, which is, “where do I go to listen to more Jethro Tull once I get bored with Jethro Tull.” I'm not suggesting that Low is Jethro Tull, but rather that, in its own strange way, it fulfills a lot of the same musical and emotional cravings that Jethro Tull did (except for the one where you go up to hairy old men and scream AQUALUNG at them. I don't think they'll ever invent the pill for that one.)

One thing about so much of this style of music that really impressed me was the way these bands (Godspeed being the natural positive extreme here,) explored sound not simply through playing around with some structuring immediately adjacent to their regular arrangements, but the ease and regularity with which they introduced new instruments, musicians and styles. Collaboration at its finest, guest artists bringing their own overt signature to works ran amok through the music. And, now a good four paragraphs into the review, I finally mention the actual band I'm reviewing, Whiteroom, which does this sort of work fabulously.

Whiteroom is essentially two musicians, producers, whatever, who are Eddy Silva and Alex Dray, and I had to go to youtube to figure out just what the hell they do other than produce and compose. Guitar, piano and singing, with mixing by Rueben Ghose, these three alone produce an excellent, thoughtful, melancholy sound that imposes an insistent relevance into your day, seeming to impart vital philosophy into your routine even when its not. On this their first album they are accompanied by a cornucopia of guest artists throwing down a hail of various sound, and these seem to have been chosen very wisely. Whether due to competent mixing or excellent interaction, the orchestration of Whiteroom is one of the primary reasons to listen to it.

Whiteroom sits on your shelf comfortably next to your Looper or New Pornographers, your later era Beatles albums, perhaps even your Radiohead if you need it to. The album coherency is something I'm still contemplating. They play quite liberally with style and instrumentation, and so there's simply no guessing what the next song is going to be like, except that you can probably guess that it'll be on the intelligent indy side of the spectrum. There was a notable absence of people screaming into bled out microphones about how Cthulhu was about to spew forth from his watery grave and eat us all, or anything like that. Sometimes the whole work feels more like a compilation, a venue or vector for the guest artists to show off, but beneath it all there is a single signature style which I can only conclude is the word of our two stars.

Whiteroom is polite music for people who want to sit down and devote a little attention to what they're listening to. It leans closely to pop elements with, like I said, a typically brooding and somewhat melancholy sound, although not quite so down as Low or Godspeed tend to be. Think Nuetral Milk Hotel without the depressing Nazi war crime thematic elements and you're on the right track. The songs and lyrics are both complex and intelligent, but not excessive in their frivolity or post-modern experimentation. As a result, the album is easily accessible to virtually anyone and will appeal instantly, I think, to anyone who found themselves, however unwillingly, singing along to Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hands. I been downhearted baby. I been downhearted baby. Ever since the day we met...