Guitars, White Night White Night

I’ve always thought of The Velvet Underground as a band that was less about songs and more about a general feeling, a kind of sleepy-yet-restless nervousness that’s raw and wide-open and pretty much uniquely urban. To this kid from partly-rural central Texas, the VU was like the sound of Noo Yawk, the dirty, unpretty side of Manhattan that’s been plastered and painted over (for the most part) in the ensuing decades. Some of the songs I liked and some just gave me a damn headache, but it didn’t matter in the end, because what I got out of it was that feeling, like I was standing out there on the street corner with ’em, looking around nervously and smoking and wondering when The City would step out and eat me alive.

After listening to Guitars’ White Night White Night, I’m thinking maybe they get that feeling from those old VU albums, too. I’ll admit, the album’s title makes it hard to escape the White Light/White Heat comparison, but it’s in the band’s sound, as well. The guitars are sharp-edged but half-aware, drifting around lazily in a cloud of knives that occasionally brush the skin, while April5k’s bass and J.D.’s drums rumble and bubble beneath and primary singer Pope Jon PPPP talk/sings in a near-monotone over the top. The effect is so laidback as to be nearly narcotic, even on faster, more energetic, guitar-heavy tracks like “I’d Never Lie,” which has some seriously “Satisfaction”-ish guitars.

I don’t mean to say, by the by, that Guitars are some VU tribute, because they go far, far beyond those boundaries in terms of music; like I said, I’m thinking more just the general feel, here. Music-wise, they’re a lot more mellow and rural than Lou Reed and company could ever manage, taking the mid-fi urban grime and making it less grimy and more, well, dusty and lonesome.

Looking towards more contemporary folks, I see some close kinship to fellow retro-’60s/’70s ramblers The Duchess and the Duke, although those two fuse far more Byrdsian jangle into their sound than the Guitars crew. Still, though, there’s a similar bitter/tired darkness going on in both bands, and a very similar warm-yet-bleak feel.

“It’s Probably Inevitable,” for its part, channels the ghost of some long-gone girl-group from the wrong side of the tracks (vocals courtesy, I believe, of keyboardist/guitarist Stacey, although I can’t be sure) for a head-nodding, damaged yet beautiful meander that’s halfway between The Cowboy Junkies and the Vandelles, with guitars that start out twangy and echoey and morph into a psych-blues raveup by the song’s end. “Not This Time” is similarly sleepy and melancholy, with downbeat vocals from Pope Jon PPPP that make you want to find a cool, dark place and open your wrists.

The high point for me comes with “The Black Mass,” probably the fiercest/fastest thing the band does on White Night; it’s helped along by the urgent “Watch out, watch out!” backing vocals and the twisting, corkscrewing guitar riff that brings to mind the Fatal Flying Guilloteens.

Weirdly, the one track on here that I’d heard prior to the full-length, “Waiting For A Good Time,” is significantly improved from the version I’d heard (can’t remember where, unfortunately). It’s the odd man out here, starting with an odd little speech and some party chatter, then riding a coolly Sonic Youth-ish groove and see-saw guitar riff, with April5k serving in Kim Gordon’s stead. It’s pretty appropriate, really, that this comes at the very end of the album — if it’d been dropped somewhere in the middle, it would’ve totally derailed the overall mood.

Which, again, seems to me to be pretty much the point of the album as a whole. Give it a little time; I wasn’t sure what to make of White Night at first, so it just eyed me from the corner for a while ’til I could really get a grasp on it. Once I did, though, I was sold.