Whitney - Spark (Milky White Vinyl)

LP

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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. The recalcitrant ennui of opener “NOTHING REMAINS,” the

devastating loss of “TERMINAL,” the sun-streaked renewal of “REAL LOVE”: However surprising

it may sound, SPARK is less a radical reinvention for Whitney than an honest accounting of how

it feels when you move out of your past and into your present, when you take the next steps of

your lives and careers at once and without apology. SPARK maintains the warmth and ease of

Whitney’s early work; these songs glow with the newness of now.


Listen closely, and you’ll notice frequent references to smoke and fire throughout SPARK,

itself a double entendre for inspiring something new or burning down the old. Max and Julien

were indeed in Portland for the Fall of 2020, when smoke from nearby fires choked the city at

record levels. It was terrifying and tragic, but they pressed on. “We found a way to live while the

world was burning/Real life was caving in,” Julien sings almost merrily during “BACK THEN,” an

anthem for finding out what’s on the other side of hardship.


In these dire days, scientists speak increasingly of serotiny, an evolutionary miracle that

causes some trees to release seeds only amid a season of fire. That is how SPARK often feels—

Whitney’s circumstances were so fraught on so many levels that they hung “the past...out to

dry” and began again, finding a fresh version of themselves, their relationship, and their band

after the blaze. Max and Julien are back in Chicago now, sharing a cozy walkup with a little

studio, where they’re already building songs for the next Whitney album. They’re both in happy

romances, too. Now that they let the past burn, everything is new for Max and Julien. SPARK

is not only Whitney’s best album; it is an inspiring testament to perseverance and renewal, to

best friends trusting each another enough to carry one another to the other side of this season

of woe.


Selling Points

First pressing on limited edition Milky White vinyl
Over 250,000 US Equivalents ATD; Over 67,000 US Physical ATD
1.38M monthly listeners on Spotify; approaching 500,000,000 streams worldwide
Five singles over 20,000,000 streams; “No Woman” nearing 100M total streams
Press/TV history includes: 2 page print feature in Billboard, Colbert x 2, CBS Saturday
Morning, FADER, PAPER, Pollstar cover story, INTERVIEW feature, Pitchfork “Rising”, T

Mag - convo w/ Elton John

Extensive touring planned in support of SPARK

SIDE A:
1) NOTHING REMAINS
2) BACK THEN

3) BLUE

4) TWIRL

5) REAL LOVE

6) MEMORY


SIDE B:

7) SELF

8) NEVER CROSSED MY MIND

9) TERMINAL

10) HEART WILL BEAT

11) LOST CONTROL

12) COUNTY LINES