Whitest Boy Alive - Rules

Release Date: March 30, 2009

★★★★★ Tracks:

Rollercoaster Ride

1517

Gravity

Whereas Dreams started with a bang but quickly tailed off in to dull mediocrity, Rules starts slowly but grows more and more engaging as its second half approaches. There are three especially strong tracks, all in a row, starting with the jazzy-dance single, “1517." “Gravity” follows, and while writing has never been Erlend Øye's strength (although we should give him credit considering English isn’t his first language), relying on a great voice and a million different ways to write about love and heartbreak, he comes up with an excellent set of lyrics on the touchy topic of a friend falling for his girlfriend. The next song, "Promise Less or Do More," has such a great guitar line inserted in to where the chorus would go that they didn't even bother adding lyrics to it.

While Rules is similar to Dreams, it isn't nearly as tedious. This can partly be attributed to the addition of a synthesizer/keyboard, adding more energy, another instrumental layer, and a bit of disco to music that was often too colorless before. Erlend Øye continues to take the "less is more" approach, but it's much more effective here. Using his words sparsely, weaving vocals in and out of the melodies, he allows the music to be the focal point of Whitest Boy Alive, never overcrowding the overall atmosphere with verbosity. Because the hooks are more contagious and the music has additional layering, the approach pays off.

That's not to say there isn't anything wrong with Rules; there are a couple of songs that completely miss the mark. The droning, repetitiveness of "Time Bomb" gets old quickly, and the already-used-a-million-times-over dance melody of "High On the Heels" proves the synths can sometimes be more hindrance than help. Rules may not be groundbreaking, but that's not what Whitest Boy Alive's intentions are. This is breezy, jazzy pop for people who enjoy the relaxing melodies the band produces, and the complete ease at which they do so. It's fun and contagious, but also complex and incredibly tight. The Whitest Boy Alive are not asking you to take them too seriously, they just want you to have some fun, while simultaneously challenging themselves as musicians and performers.

(Note: the LP's songs are arranged differently than the downloaded version.)

Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams

Release Date: March 9, 1999

★★★★★ Tracks:

Golden Cage

Inflation

I grew up with a father who rarely listened to anything but jazz. Being such a great pianist, he enjoyed instrumental mastery and the skill it takes to write odd time signatures in to a song. Placing the emphasis on lyrics, really a very recent phenomenon in music history, was never something he was OK with. While I understand his sentiment, along with his other major complaint that most pop and rock is confined to major chords and 4/4 time signatures, I never completely embraced jazz myself (I like lyrics too much. And I'm a half-decent guitarist, but not good enough to play most jazz -- so maybe I'm just bitter). But as I grew older I did learn to respect jazz, and slowly I began to listen to some of it on my own. It would eventually lead to a soft spot for any pop/rock artists that include some jazzy elements to their songs. And the Whitest Boy Alive do just that.

I've also been a huge fan of the vocalist Whitest Boy Alive recruited: Euro-pop superstar Erlend Øye. Erlend has a multitude of music projects. And being as Kings of Convenience, my favorite group of his, has one of my all-time favorite folk records, Riot On an Empty Street, I'll give anything of his a shot. With Whitest Boy Alive, his voice compliments the music very well, providing quiet, sparse lyricism to the jazzy and spacious instrumentation the band is so comfortable writing.

All of this should culminate in to a near perfect record for someone like me, but there are a lot of issues with Dreams. It all starts out well enough with the catchy "Burning" and the incredible "Golden Cage," but becomes increasingly monotonous throughout the middle part of the record. There just isn't much risk taken in the overall sound and production of Dreams either. The instrumentation is sometimes too sparse, and there's very little distinction between most of the ten tracks included here. Although Dreams is purposefully minimalist and atmospheric in approach, they could stand to add a bit more excitement to the record, as some might fall in to a dreamless sleep before it's over.

If I'm ever jonesing for some jazzy rock, I'll go to bands like Karate and Sharks Keep Moving, who did this whole thing a lot better about ten years ago. But I do love the two singles on Dreams, especially that walking bass line and guitar jingle on "Golden Cage." And I heard enough promise on this record to go out and grab the second, hoping they'd improved.