The White Whales :: "Flowers"

The White Whales build a bit of Americana-pop that slams and slides between giddy alt-country influences, mainstream indie rock and bits of punk. On the immediately satisfying "Flowers," from the band's debut LP, Lakestate, lightning guitar pick-ups and a racing snare chase each other around a buried vocal that recalls the best parts of the Pela/We Are Augustines catalogue. More broadly, the White Whales paraphrase the type of pop that the National made so deservedly famous. The elegy here - and there always is a fair share - is straight fatalism; we will all die. The lyrics damn this existential darkness at the center of modern life, "when I go bury me in flowers," and mourn the geographic and temporal markers that fail to help us grapple with the passing of time, "the river bleeds into the sea/a century has ended." Lakestate is full of these sorts of moments, deep sadness recast as triumphant moral-victory anthem, surely one of the best truly independent rock debuts of the year.