White Orange's Onawa EP

Remember the photo at the very bottom? That was the crazy, beautiful vinyl LP I received from the Portland band White Orange about two-and-a-half years ago--I reviewed it here. I just received the band's new EP titled Onawa--which features just three songs but still clocks in at 25 minutes long--but unfortunately it's just a CD. Kaytea, the band's publicist, did tell me that it will be available on vinyl. Maybe I read it wrong, but I think she said it will be available only on vinyl, which makes me wonder why I now have a CD of it. Nevertheless, the LP will come out on my birthday, August 6, so happy birthday to me--if I get a big, flat cardboard package sent to me, that is.

When I reviewed that last LP back in 2011, I didn't really know who White Orange was. They were one of those bands that surrounded themselves with mystery, and I remember having a tough time writing the review because there simply wasn't very much information on them online. I definitely sensed a "we're a band who wants the music to speak for us" vibe, so I left it alone. Afterward, I heard from a lot of people who told me they were HUGE fans of White Orange, and that I really needed to see them live to "get it." I never did see them, but I have noticed that the ranks of White Orange fans have grown considerably over the last couple of years. Part of that is because singer Dustin Hill and drummer Dean Carroll also play for Black Pussy, another Portland band that has been reviewed in this blog. (For the record, Ryan McIntyre and Adam Pike handle guitars and bass, respectively.) Both bands seem to be developing parallel yet symbiotic followings.

Overall, the two bands both embrace hard rock, psychedelia, a '70s feel and healthy appetite for weed (look at all those lovely potted plants in the profile pic on White Orange's Facebook page). The difference is that Black Pussy has an almost punk sound straight from the late '70s, lean and aggressive and basic and fast, while White Orange is a big, turgid maelstrom of fist-pumping power. It's a matter of tempo, perhaps, but Black Pussy has more of an immediate appeal, while White Orange requires that you be consumed with the enormous, million-gallon tank of sound--you'll have it all sorted out by the time you float to the top.

In other words, the three songs on Onawa are dense yet simple, basic riffs, a minimal melody that's differentiated more by licks than scales. It is a wall of sound at first, but repeated listenings do pay off. You'll be tested on the final track of three, the epic eleven-minute plus "...and I Leave the Circus," where you'll wonder just how long the band can repeat that riff, and how ballsy it is to do so, but then you'll noticed the slowly evolving textures and realize something much deeper is going on.

I've said this before, but this is heavy and somewhat primitive stuff, but primitive in an extremely clever way. I know that White Orange isn't being especially subtle about the fact that they're making stoner music in 2013--good old fashioned stoner music, that is--but there's something valiant in that. I'm watching so many people I know freak out under the stress of our crazy world--terrorist bombings, political divisiveness, mass killings--and so maybe we're repeating the '60s and tearing everything to pieces before we grab a few roles of duct tape. White Orange seems to be saying c'mon everybody, let's just skip ahead to 1972 or so and kick back and chill out for a while. It's gonna be okay.

White Orange on CD

A few months ago I received a beautiful and mysterious slab o' vinyl that may be the most gorgeous picture disc I've ever seen. This 12", from an enigmatic Portland band called White Orange, basically featured two versions of the song "Middle of the Riddle"--a long extended psychedelic hyperjam and an edited radio-friendly version that basically extracted the middle section and eschewed the lengthy build-up and fade outs. "Middle" was a playful, grungy '70s style hard rock song, only occasionally top-heavy with thundering prog metal riffs.

Well, I have the new White Orange debut CD courtesy of Kaytea at XO, and it's quite a different animal--even though it inserts the shorter "Middle of the Riddle" in the showcased track 3 position. Judging from the first two tracks, "Where" and "Color Me Black," this is a band that plays on the same jungle gym as bands like Mastodon in a playground just across the street from the guys in Tool. White Orange cites such influences as Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, King Crimson and Syd Barrett, but this suggests a looser, free-form sound. Instead, White Orange's sound is tight, heavy and ornate.

The promo copy provides White Orange with such whimsical descriptors as "psychedelic sludgy doomy stoner rockers" and "full of hazy solos, waffling clean vocals, gauzy druggie guitar figures"--and that's pretty damn close. (Is it bad to put promo copy in your review? Especially when it's this entertaining?) The vocals are processed heavily and border on lugubrious, adding a Gothic tinge to the songs (Nathaniel Hawthorne gothic, not Bauhaus gothic), and the guitar riffs are fuzzy, simple and have all the subtlety of a mudslide. If you're so inclined, your head will bob rhythmically to these paleolithic slabs of arena rock. If we had White Orange back in the '70s (and my memory of a couple of Hot Tuna LPs come close), we'd be wreaking major destruction on Saturday nights with songs like "Dinosaur Bones" and "Wonderful" as our official soundtrack.

If I don't quite embrace this particular wall of sound, it's more a result of my own fading youth than anything else, and perhaps my desire for more precision in my metallurgy and less "sludge" and "haze." But, as someone much younger than me recently said, White Orange is one of the more thoughtful, interesting and inventive prog metals out there. I'm inclined to agree. Perhaps I shouldn't be reviewing something this tumultuous on a Sunday morning, but I'm awake now, and ready to break something.

A Crazy-Ass New LP from White Orange

Up until a couple of years ago, I used to include a category on my year-end Vinyl Anachronist articles for Perfect Sound Forever called "Coolest Vinyl Find of the Year." Well, I know it's only January 25, but I think we already have a winner for 2011.

A mysterious package arrived at my doorstep yesterday. Okay, I know Kaytea McIntosh from XO Publicity sent it to me, but this package was big and flat, and Kaytea usually sends me little silver discs that fit neatly into my mailbox. I sniffed the package carefully and immediately detected the fine, rich smell of vinyl. I was right. What didn't know, however, was that I had just received perhaps the most beautiful picture disc I've ever seen.

It's from a Portland band called White Orange. Other than a somewhat spare and enigmatic MySpace page, there isn't a lot of information on these guys. I do know from the album cover that Dustin Hill sings, plays guitar and writes all the songs while Dean Carroll plays the drums. Evidently there are two bassists--Ryan McIntire and Adam Pike (which is fairly unusual in itself). The album has been released by Made In China Records.

There isn't even a title for the LP; it simply says "White Orange performs '...and this is why I speak to you in parables' and 'middle of the riddle.'" But as you can see from the pics, this is a sumptuous, gorgeous vinyl LP with complex, amazing artwork.

The music is pretty cool, too...this is basically an EP with just one song per side, and it's the same song. "...and this is why I speak to you in parables" is a thirteen minute-plus epic that unravels slowly yet harshly like something from Godspeed! You Black Emperor! and then settles into a punchy, noisy psychedelic rock song that channels both Hot Tuna at its most abrasive and perhaps something more progressive and elegiac like Wishbone Ash. "Middle of the Riddle" is simply a more radio-friendly edit of the same song that last just a bit over five minutes. It's basically the central (i.e. the "middle") section that eschews the long build-up in the beginning and the long jam that leads to the fade-out.

The music is almost at odds with the mystical packaging. To tell you the truth, I had no idea what to expect until the needle hit those beautifully adorned grooves. While Hill's guitar is rather straightforward, stripped and raw, Carroll's drumming is full of thunderous fills that captures the exact momentum of the greatest acid rock drummers of the late '60s and early '70s. The two bassists are very entertaining as well, with plenty of subterranean bends and drop-offs.

I'm not sure when this LP will be available to the masses, but as long as it's not priced at a premium "audiophile" LP price, it's definitely worth picking up. (A little logo on the back on the cover says "Limited Edition of 500," so there are 499 left!) Obviously the artwork alone is worth it, but the lone song-and-a-half makes me want to hear more from this Stumptown quartet so I can figure out what they're about.

You can check out White Orange's MySpace page, however, where you can sample some of their other songs. That's what I'm gonna do. It's at http://www.myspace.com/whiteorangeband.