FOKUS MUSIK Review of Telepaths

FOKUS MUSIK

Rating: 4 out of 6

It's been less than a year since Bill Whitten's last album under his pen name William Carlos Whitten, Rock Music Is the Color of Black Hair, and here he continues to explore the most peculiar dimensions of NYC rock. It involves suggestive guitar rock in a straight line descending from Lou Reed via the New York Dolls to Sonic Youth, with odd backstreet considerations like Street Love and Beggars and Whores, but consistently with twisted and idiosyncratic twists.

But this time he leaves all lead vocals to Diana Crash, who guested on the last album and whom Bill Whitten hired without an audition when they bonded over literature at the local laundromat where she worked while waiting for more tightrope dancing engagements (!). She often touches on Kim Gordon's expression, with slightly shaky spoken parts set against laconic sung parts, and it works brilliantly in a sad and very contradictory Elégie pour la Musique Rock.

Two excellent covers also find space. Loudmouth by The Ramones sounds like a very rudimentary Suicide with a Lorazepam-sed Lydia Lunch on vocals (and if you don't understand how to appreciate that as praise, we have nothing more to say to each other), and even more slowed down is the free interpretation of Tommy Tucker's Hi-Heeled Sneekers (or Hi Heal Sneekur as it's called here). But the real highlight of the album is called Heaven Is A Face, an evocative rock song in the tradition of The Flying Lizzards. It's the closest Bill Whitten has come to a hit in many years, although honestly it's still quite a ways off.

Av Patrik Forshage

26 mars 2025

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