Teesside’s psychedelic indie rockers White Noise. release debut album ‘The Traveller’, living up to a live reputation steadily cultivated around the immediate region in recent years.
The record opens in fan-pleasing fashion with popular track ‘Middle Man’, a scuzzy, high-octane number which pitches its tent equidistantly between thrilling, twiddling riffs and a high-flying Oasis-esque final third.
Throughout ‘The Traveller’, this particular dichotomy seems as fine a distillation of White Noise.’s style and approach as any. The challenge for the band would undoubtedly be to capture their on-stage spirit and tightness on record, and the exact feelings and takes I have experienced when exposed to their live show are successfully replicated.
Guitar bands have now spent decades splitting the difference between progressive and indie rock, to the point that acts such as Foals and Tame Impala can conjure many of the facets of prog in microcosm in pursuing their own unique sound. This concept plays out voluminously across ‘The Traveller’, a record which is a general tour-de-force of guitar genres; the song ‘Colours’ repeatedly veers close to achieving enough stoner-rock exit velocity and desert grunge majesty to depart the stratosphere, but its most exciting moment may nonetheless be the huge-sounding guitar lick which opens and anchors it. ‘Life In Ruin’ is testament to the plentiful helpings of glam-heavy Britpop served up here.
The band know their way around a deep pool of influences as well as they do their instruments, with each individual member contributing their own touchstones to a record carefully built and streamlined in a years-long process. The results are telling structurally, with beautifully carved set-pieces littering the album, and the journey between them never being less than sonically colourful. I couldn’t locate a dull moment which is no small feat for any band still grappling with their exact identity. If triangulating a melting pot of myriad reference points is the necessary method, this is textbook execution.
The album beds down somewhat in the middle but never truly relaxes, between the stormy waves of ‘Conversation’ and ‘Pour A Pint For Me Britain’, which intersperses its twinkling atmospheric slow-burn with calculatingly pitched frenzy, culminating in a chugging denouement. The diversity continues with free-flying instrumental ‘Message To The Floor’ verging from crystalline to crashing.
Closing trio ‘Underglow’, ‘Gallop’ and the wailing ballad that is the title track close proceedings very strongly, all being dynamic, brilliantly constructed suites on what must be one of the most virtuosic local debut albums in recent memory.
You can listen to the album now on all major streaming platforms.
