Thursday, May 11, 2017

Best of 2016 #3: White Lung - Paradise (Domino)

Watching Vancouver's White Lung mature into the band they have become today has been satisfying. Coming up from a scrappy, sloppy punk band from small town BC to the international acclaim they now enjoy is a great story, and it's come with some great music to boot.

Starting out in 2010 on the small, but influential, label Deranged Records, based out of Gibsons, BC, an isolated community on the BC Sunshine Coast, White Lung started as a pure punk band. In 2014, they jumped to the UK based Domino label. With the label's backing, White Lung took on a more mature sound, keeping the driving anger of a punk band, and melding it with melodic sensibilities. Today, they sound like a post-punk band along the lines of Savages or early Sleater-Kinney.

Paradise is every bit as heavy as 2010's It's the Evil, but vocalist Mish Way-Barber finding a more melodic and direct way of singing. It's not as rough around the edges as a punk band, but instead has the driving insistency of post-punk, a need to be heard, to have the listener to sit down and listen to every note of this album, no matter how difficult it might be to hear.

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