BREAKING
THE PRIMARY CONTRADICTION OF “The thing that we tried to keep
LIGHT UPON THE LAKE, the debut LP constant was never relying on any sort of
WHITNEY
BY NATE ROGERS
PHOTO BY SANDY KIM
from Whitney, is this: how can music so
effects that create space, like reverb or delay,
strongly rooted in melancholy make you feel
and trying to keep everything dry,” Kakacek
so glad to be alive? It’s a strange platter—
explains. “So as the guitar player, that was a
and to be sure, Whitney’s kind of a strange
challenge for me to play differently because
band (just take a look at their introductory
there wasn’t any way to brush things under
portraits on Instagram if you really want to, the rug. It had to be really clean.”
uh, get to know them). But in talking to Max
Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich, the songwriting
from
duo at the forefront of the group, it becomes
Westerns—a
clear that there’s an explanation for every
group that Ehrlich joined as a drummer
contradiction—a key to every song.
toward the end of the band’s existence
(after first meeting them while playing with
Take
those
seemingly
disparate
Kakacek is referring to the difference
his
earlier
playing
now-defunct
with
Smith
glitter/garage
emotions on the record, for instance. Unknown Mortal Orchestra). Following that
They’re not so disparate when you find out
breakup—and dealing with new romantic
that Ehrlich and Kakacek wrote much of the
breakups of their own—Kakacek and Ehrlich
music in the dead of a brutal Chicago winter, started writing together, laying everything
but then took a trip west and recorded it
they were going through on the table. “You
at the tail end of a pleasant Los Angeles
just have to make the most honest music
summer. So pleasant, in fact, that while they
that you can,” says Ehrlich. “You’re not gonna
were making the album, various members of
make good music if you think you’re hot shit.”
the septet took turns sleeping in a tent in the
backyard of their co-producer—Jonathan
feel like a bare-assed jump into the album’s
Rado of Foxygen.
titular lake, and their disposition cuts deep
into the way that certain sunny memories
“We FaceTimed him, and it was the
Tracks like “Golde