Whistler Telltale Sauce

The second full-length by Whistler is a shimmering charge of sound, a spell so loud and ambitious it wants to be heard through speakers the size of a door. Notes boom and sway with a sparkling anti-gravity, lifting you into the air, lowering you onto soft fields. In the words of Whistler's vocalist/guitarist Louis Scherfig, "Our songs musically are quite driven by an idea of beauty." This beauty is paired with a tenacious commitment, each of the nine songs carrying its own sturdy, balanced grace. It is easy to picture the four members walking circles around each song, shoving here and shaking there, ensuring that everything is firmly grounded, supported, braced. Telltale Sauce is an architectural masterpiece. It's also a head-hung downer. Because for every unforgettable hook, for every harmonized embrace, there's a shattering confrontation in the lyrics. As the twinned, weary voices of Scherfig and Ditte Gyldendal Amby sing on the title track, "Change is gonna come," before clarifying: "It'll hunt us down forever." Perhaps Telltale Sauce is best understood as Madchester without the drugs-all the smeared colors and harsh edges of, like, The Stone Roses, but forced into the sober, inevitable light of 2022.