Whirr’s new EP Around is not an assertive work: the songs move with the forward momentum of a tortoise dosed with Benadryl, Kristina Esfandiari and Loren Rivera's vocals are nearly see-through, and the melodies a mere suggestion. Nonetheless, the Bay Area sextet engages the listener with classic, deal-closing salesmanship in the process: they tell you what they’re gonna say, they say it, and then they tell you what they just said. Start with their name, which was changed from the original “Whirl.” Recall their 2011 EP Distressor and 2012 debut LP Pipe Dreams, which were compared to basically every 90s shoegaze band you still listen to. And consider song titles like “Swoon", “Drain” and “Keep”, all one-syllable verbs that evoke the slowest movements or a complete standstill. It’s clear they favor the swirling, deliberate iterations of their chosen genre and on Around’s four sweeping tracks, Whirr deliver on their sales pitch. The problem is that they fulfill a need for a certain audience, but they don't create demand amongst those outside of it.
Forgoing the relatively tight strictures of Pipe Dreams, Whirr position themselves within the realm of NorCal bands that have been using intimidation tactics to coax beauty out of their guitars. As with the Deftones/ISIS collaborative Palms, Whirr’s song lengths are in place seemingly as self-fulfilling prophecy-- played at twice the speed, you might be able to hear nine-minute opener “Drain” as a pop song with elegant melodic motion and a fairly standard structure, but that’s not the point of Around. The point is to push “Drain” to an extreme of tempo and volume, to see how loud and slow it can get while still maintaining its figure. Though they lack the Brooklyn transplanted Weekend’s propulsion (or at least have no interest in it), Whirr similarly layer shrieking fuzz guitars to the point where they become meditative and mesmeric. Guitarist Nick Bassett used to play in Deafheaven, and at its best, Around momentarily touches Sunbather’s all-encompassing fire/water, agony/ecstasy rapture*.*
Whirr just happens to go about it the same way over Around’s half hour and, as a result, the record focuses more on juxtaposition and texture than impression. They work with fairly commonplace dualities: babymaking music under the threat of apocalypse, fluttering vocals against flagrant guitars. Most of all, Whirr use brittle material to create an impenetrable, impervious wall of sound. All of this stuff inevitably traces back to My Bloody Valentine and with the distorted guitars and cooing vocals so distended they sound a bit modal, you can imagine m b v in a metal mood*.* With enough scrutiny, the four tracks here distinguish themselves: “Keep” stands out on account of moving with a swinging gait rather than a plod, evoking a monstrous cover of Cocteau Twins ca. Treasure. It also contains the clearest and most idiosyncratic lyric-- Esfandiari breathes “insecurities make me shy,” punctuated by a startling thrust of pulverized guitar. That’s how all the immediately striking moments occur here-- there’s a small break before the low end hits and the distortion surges even further into the red, the loud/soft dynamics of grunge given shoegaze exaggeration in terms of both volume and tempo.
The tidal pull and deep blue-black disposition of Around creates an ambience that makes for an easy selling point-- Pure Moods music for people who dream about the kind of vacations where they sit alone on a freezing beach at night. Is it pretty? Of course it is. But how much of *Around’*s beauty is attributable to Whirr and how much of it's predetermined due to natural forces? Without an insatiable need for shoegaze that can get doomy without edging into metal, it’s tough for the listener to ascertain what exactly is at stake on Around. You’re not here for the lyrics, though it is worth noting that while the central refrain of “Drain” (“drain me”) may not have been used verbatim in any My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive song, it’s the basic sentiment that’s driven the genre since the beginning-- the listener submits to the artist’s pummeling sound in exchange for cleansing and catharsis. But, on Around, Whirr don’t elevate themselves beyond the level of a listener; instead, they remain supplicant to their influences.
