Albums of the Year # 60 Whitney K - Two Years

 

 

Coming across as drunk, or stoned, or both in song is a particular gift. Jeffrey Lee Pierce could do it. So can Nick Cave. Beck,Shane McGowan, Dan Stuart of Green on Red, Tom Waits, Kurt Vile, Stuart Staples, Paul Westerberg. Masters of the art. It seems we can add young Canadian Whitney K to their ranks.

His latest album Two Years is a proper treat. Life viewed through the raised glass of the grizzled and dissolute regular at the end of the bar who's showing no desire to leave at this point of the evening even though he's already told the barmaid his life story three times tonight.

Konner Whitney, for he is Whitney K, hails from Whitehorse, in Northern Yukon and has recently moved back there. Two Years is a wonderful record, scarred and wizened but also sage and nuanced. There's much wisdom to be found in bars, as well as pain, fellowship, release and the bitter dregs of experience.

There are traces of The Velvet Underground here, both Reed and Cale, but it's both at their most Country and at a point where neither of them could care less anymore. Beck certainly raises his head at several points of the record too, the frayed trenchancy of Odelay.

But most of all this is Whitney, and he's consistently good company. The kind of person that you chance upon a bar once in a while. A fascinating raconteur who tells you the deepest secrets of those at the other end of the room, buys a round of shots that makes your head spin and tells some of the best and tallest tales you've ever heard.

There's plenty of wit here too but it's of the wry and mordant kind. Gallows humour essentially. Also plenty of variety. Two Years is a pleasant reminder that reports the death of this kind of songwriting has been greatly exagerrated, In fact judging by this, it's in rude health indeed. I'll drink to that!