This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Album Reviews
Album Review: Whitest Boy Alive – Rules (Bubbles)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 30 March 2009
In 2001, Norwegian Erland Øye helped define the then flavour of the month ‘new acoustic movement’ genre as one half of Kings Of Convenience. A growing interest in electronic music inspired his next project, Whitest Boy Alive, who began as an electronic outfit, but by the release of 2006’s ‘Dreams’, their sound had been scaled down, excluding any programmed elements. ‘Rules’ maintains their minimalist indie-pop sound but increases the electronic influence, as well incorporates aspects of other genres, especially on the opening track ‘Keep A Secret’, which recalls seminal German krautrock band ‘Can’ during their mid-1970s peak. ‘Courage’ and ‘Dead End’ demonstrate the influence of more contemporary sounds; guitar driven but with added electronic touches and flourishes. ‘Island’, the closing track, that had previously been previewed on the band’s MySpace page, remains one of the standouts, showing the band at their most ambitious sonically, embracing all the different directions the album had gone in one fell swoop. Erland Øye’s voice is slight and ethereal, like Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip, which would also be a pretty accurate reference point for anyone coming to Whitest Boy Alive blind. Øye still tours with Kings Of Convenience and there’s every chance of future recordings, which reveals him to be something of a diverse musical talent (he’s also a respected and in-demand DJ); able to turn his hand to whichever genre takes his fancy. KW
Buy from iTunes
Buy from Amazon
