Name: Spark
Brand: Whitney

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

SC437lp

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Colour

black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2022-09-16

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Secre­tly

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

656605043715

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1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

SC437cd

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "SC437cd"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

656605043722

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "656605043722"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Whitney

Genre US

Rock-Pop

Label US

Secretly Canadian

Alex G - <a href="https://www.roughtrade.com/us/alex-g/god-save-the-animals/lp-plus?_kx=">God Save the Animals</a> The Philadelphia songwriter moves further away from lo-fi on his sonically rich and expansive new record.

Iceage - <a href="https://www.roughtrade.com/us/iceage/shake-the-feeling-outtakes-rarities-2015-2021/lp-plus?_kx=">Shake the Feeling: Outtakes &amp; Rarities 2015-2021</a> The acclaimed post-punk outfit digs through the archives for a compilation of deep cuts and b-sides that are as good as any album releases.

Beth Orton - <a href="https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beth-orton/weather-alive/lp-plus?_kx=">Weather Alive</a> Using an admittedly cheap upright piano installed in the shed of her garden, Beth Orton conjures an ethereal, meditative atmosphere.

The Soft Moon - <a href="https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-soft-moon/exister/lp-plus?_kx=">Exister</a> The industrial-inflected new wave of Luis Vasquez continues to thrive on his most polished effort to date.

Jackie Cohen - <a href="https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jackie-cohen/pratfall/lp-plus?_kx=">Pratfall</a> Teaming up with her husband Jonathan Rado, the Los Angeles artist engulfs her indie pop in a warm embrace.

Rough Trade Edit

Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek could hear the staggering differences in the songs they were writing for their third album as Whitney, Spark—the buoyant drum loops, the effortless falsetto hooks, the coruscant keyboard lines. They suddenly sounded like a band reimagined, their once-ramshackle folk-pop now brimming with unprecedented gusto and sheen. But could they see it, too?

So in the ad hoc studio the Chicago duo built in the living room of their rented Portland bungalow, a shared 2020 escape hatch amid breakups and lockdowns, Julien and Max decided to find out. Somewhere between midnight and dawn every night, their brains refracted by the late hour and light psychedelics, they’d play their latest creations while a hardware store disco ball spun overhead and slowed-down music videos from megastars spooled silently on YouTube. Did their own pop songs—so much more immediate and modern than their hazy origins—fit such big-budget reels? 

“We’d come to the conclusion we weren’t going to be filming Super 8 videos to this stuff anymore,” Julien remembers with a grin. “How about something more hi-fi, cinematic?” When the footage and the tunes linked, Julien and Max knew they had done it, that they’d finally found Whitney’s sound. Spark reintroduces Whitney as a contemporary syndicate of classic pop, its dozen imaginative and endearing tracks wrapping fetching melodies around paisley-print Dilla beats and luxuriant electronics. What’s more, Whitney reduces three years of extreme emotional highs and lows into 38 brisk but deep minutes, each of these 12 tracks a singable lesson in what it is they (and, really, we) have all survived.