White Hills - So You Are...So You'll Be (Album Review)
Tuesday, 13 August 2013
Written by Ben Bland
It appears that White Hills are no longer prepared to pull any punches. Their psych ramblings have always had a solid dose of Hawkwind’s proto-metal heaviness, and a fair dollop of their distinctive space rock tropes as well. ‘So You Are... So You’ll Be’, though, takes things to another level on both fronts.
The introductory seconds are made up of sci-fi bleeps and groans, but then In Your Room comes along and smashes the listener into the next star system. With its thunderous lead riff and pounding, powerfully addictive chorus, the song marks out everything that White Hills do when at their best.
Not only is it one hell of a tune, it also operates on a more recondite level. White Hills may do a jolly good impression of being stoned to the point of having few ideas other than to regurgitate the sounds of their forebears, but they’re actually a lot better than those occasional tendencies suggest.
There is a dark, malevolent personality at work here, and ‘So You Are...So You’ll Be’ captures it more succinctly than any of their prior works.
Moving on from In Your Room, White Hills push their luck a little. Forever in Space (Enlightened) and the title track make few bones about their classic psych influences, but the band’s use of repetition and subtle dynamic shifts has more in common with Swans than it does Gong.
As a result, passages that, upon first perusal, appear to meander dangerously actually end up providing some of the most thoughtful and engaging material on the album.
Pleasingly, the effect of White Hills changing up to the top gear of their riff overdrive is one of danger and excitement. Where other contemporary psych acts tend to tread the same old turf at a tedious plod, White Hills charge with genuinely threatening energy. Their cosmic overloading of starry-eyed guitars here is thrilling to hear.
That’s not to say that anything reaches the accessibility of In Your Room, but then White Hills have always been champions at obscuring that side of their work. The cocktail they have produced here regularly carries a semblance of predictability, that much has to be admitted, but the conviction of the performance makes that ultimately insignificant.
While it would be easy to paint White Hills into the same corner as the impressive, but effectively insignificant, modern psych revivalists that are ten a penny these days, it soon emerges that there is something of underlying importance going on with this band. ‘So You Are...So You’ll Be’ is a thunderously decent attempt at showing White Hills’ true mettle, but the most enticing thing of all is that it suggests a real classic may be only just down the road...
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