Ad For “The Whitehaus Family Record Family Record,” coming soon on The Whitehaus Family Record

As we shift from the decade of America’s horse into the year we make contact, the Googleplex blogosphere seems to be rendering record labels pretty much obsolete as distribution networks. They are, however, becoming are increasingly important as aesthetic umbrellas, harboring like-minded projects as the latter blow their loads into the soil and sprout great froot. Of course, this only really applies to labels that can be considered “indie” or “DIY” in some way; the fact that a record is on Warner Bros. tells you nothing about it, whereas when you hear that a record was dropped by Southern Lord, Load, or Not Not Fun, you can usually make a pretty accurate guess as to what it will sound like.

So this brings us back around to the lecture at hand: I’ve got a trio of records here from various points in the last year or so on a tiny Massachusetts label, presumably run out of somebody’s apartment and/or performance space, called The Whitehaus Family Record. By throwing down the Family gauntlet in the title, one can safely infer that there is some prevailing camaraderie and cross-pollination amongst the people at play, and that theorem metes itself out in the actual product at hand.

The most recent of these records–and, sadly, the one that did the least for me–is the brief, quiet, unassuming, semi-experimental Sleepytime Tea folk of Look Into Look Unto by the aptly named Manners. Each track features some low, barely intelligible whispery dude vocals with the occasional faint backup singing of a second member of either gender, accompanied by a spare smattering of acoustic guitar, some bass plugging, and the occasional violin, lap steel, or Sine Wave Generator flourish. As the 8 tracks burn by in a tidy 21 minutes, songs float by in hazy fragments that rarely cohere into a full-fledged song. Look Into Look Unto does succeed in establishing a mood and sticking to it; it’s just that that mood is naptime.

To be honest, I rarely listen to music that sounds like this of my own volition, so coming up with comparisons to sound-alike artists is not as easy as it is for the next two acts, who make it rrrrrreeeeaally easy. My GF says they sound kinda like the Microphones, so I guess if you like those guys, you might like this. It’s not that it’s bad per se; it could just use a little more polish and dynamics to differentiate it from every other super mellow quiet folk album being coffee-shitted out in the plain view of baristas across this great land of ours.

The next most recent missive I have from these here Whitehaus folx is Light-Lightning, featuring the more festive and notable An(Co)tics of Truman Peyote. Whereas I struggled to define signposts for Manners’ barely-there folksiness, Truman Peyote come barreling out of the gate with a cringeworthy message board handle of a name and an opening track that would sound perfectly cozy on any post-Strawberry Jam Animal Collective emission. While the music contained over the rest of the album is fairly Peacebonery, it’s really the yelpy vocal interplay that pushes the lemmings over the cliff and into the Collection. Be forewarned, however that only a few of the 10 tracks on Light-Lightning feature those AnCo vocal tics; Truman Peyote hand the rest of the record over to electro-folk noodlery that bears more of a resemblance to the semi-experimental beat-folk of some of Anticon’s more indie-leaning projects (cLOUDDEAD, Why?), or the indie folktronica of someone like Four Tet. In fact, if we lived in a world where the name Panda Bear only referred to furry fellers who refuse to fuck, I’d probably be forced to compare the vocal interplay to them Anticon boyz, but you can’t spell Anticon without the AnCo, so I guess it was fated by the Godz from both sides to begin with. In spite of the overwhelming surface similarity to the newly christened Princes of Pazznjop, Light-Lightening is a promising release from an artist who should only get better as they strike out more on their own as they get increasingly irritated with being compared to Animal Collective in every single review of this record on the internet.

Finally, we come to the class of this batch, the nearly year-old Return to Source CD-R by a stoned dude with a beard who records under the name Many Mansions. Like labelbros Truman Peyote, Many Mansions wears a somewhat smaller but still significant AnCobatross round his neck. Fortunately, his is a much more consistent effort, transcending that somewhat limiting and easy comparison with looped soundscapes recalling High Places or Creature Comforts-era Black Dice and occasional ventures into Graceland call-and-response territory. Along the way, he also finds room for some New Age mellifluousness that reminds me of a more stonery and woodlanded Andreas Vollenweider.

Apart from the truly heinous and way-too-on-the-nose opening lyrics of “Oneness” (“I think I’ll smoke some weed and take some LSD and walk in the woods and maybe climb a tree”), Return to Source moves along at a brisk clip through its various stages of blissy sonics, giving each track enough breathing room to evolve and breathe without ever overstaying its welcome or going into extended disco-edit rave-up territory. Actually, an album of 9-minute workouts of genre fuckery from this guy doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all, which is as good a compliment as I can pay almost anybody in this era of increasingly short attention spans and an overwhelming glut of listening options. If they keep releasing records as good as Return to Source, the Whitehaus Family Record may yet grow to be a true force to be reckoned with; as it is they are definitely worth keeping a Magic Eye on at your next shroom party. Just make sure that you fix your toilet door beforehand.

Words: Matt Kruglinski

Tags: Light-Lightning, Look into Look Unto, Manners, Many Mansions, Return to Source, The Whitehaus Family Record, Truman Peyote

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 2:37 am and is filed under Reviews, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.