Fokus Musik review of My Life in Cinema

https://www.fokusmusik.se/william-carlos-whitten-my-life-in-cinema/

 Yes, I know it's crazy. I know that brainiacs and eccentrics like Luke Haines and Lawrence - to name two musically related geniuses - are by definition a concern for only a handful of people, but even among the cult artists there are those who are so odd that they go under the radar of even the most obscurity-seeking.

The cult status that Bill Whitten now possesses is so exclusive that I can only think of one more dedicated Swedish fan besides myself (wave Christian!), but that is more due to laziness and inattention on the part of those around me than to William Carlos Whitten, as he now calls himself. Because whether he's making Sonic Youth-sharp rock like on the duet album Telepaths with his laundromat find Diane Crash earlier this year or now releasing a thematic film-related cassette on a small British label, his songs are consistently smart New York rock. It may have different frameworks in terms of themes, arrangements or sound carriers, but his songs are always hyper-strong and focused. Few of the cassette's 15 songs extend past the three-minute mark, but on the other hand, buyers of the cassette also get Bill Whitten's latest short story with a film theme as a bonus. And above all, you get a number of excellent rock songs, rudimentarily recorded on synths and drum machines and brilliant in their genuine pop melancholy, like the fantastic Joey and Suddenly, Savagely or the epic My Ceiling Is A Discoteque.

There are certainly examples of rockier moments with home-recorded bass and sometimes a spiky NYC guitar, and although the Lou Reed references remain in the spartan angularity of, for example, Chauffer and Insurgent Kisses, this is mainly a home electronic story.
Connoussieur of Hunger is one in a series of his pronounced kind-of tributes to his hometown, and the same New York environment is also central, for example, in Jewels Fill the Gutter, which takes the electronics a step further and tries out vocoder-distorted voice. It works fine in the context, of course, provided that you are not an audiophile. 
William Carlos Whitten is even more eccentric than the aforementioned geniuses, and his second release of the year is his second triumph of the year. Congratulations to me and Christian who will listen and love it, and the rest of you will probably have yourselves to blame.