Whitney have announced their new album, Small Talk will be released November 7th on AWAL. To mark the occasion, they’ve released a new single, “Dandelions,” a mid-summer sparkler with lead-singer Julien Ehrlich’s lamenting falsetto scaffolded by horns, sweeping string arrangements and plaintive slide guitar from Max Kakacek.
“A couple years ago Max and I were both on the brink of moving across the country to be closer to the people we were dating at the time. Over the span of a few months both relationships somewhat abruptly crumbled, leaving us with equal parts confusion and sadness, mourning the futures that would have accompanied those relationships as well as the relationships themselves. Inspired by those events (and on a whim of Midwestern pride) we wound up spinning the story of ‘Dandelions’ into one of a big city hopeful who gets chewed up and spit back out into the heartland.”
After a decade of being roommates and bandmates, first in Smith Westerns and then in Whitney, Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek entered the studio in the Summer of 2024 to begin recording Small Talk sans-producer, with assorted pals dropping in to add parts. The result is 11 incandescent songs that delight on two levels. There are instant classic Whitney songs here, tunes that tug at the same heartfelt melodic strings they’ve always pulled, and still other moments that speak to how much room they gave themselves to evolve
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