Some records punch you in the face, and others don't dare even whisper in your ear. Then there are the ones like White Light Strobing, the full-length debut of the recently upsized Olympia, Wash., trio Desolation Wilderness. Records like that just hang in the air. If you're fond of word-shy, languid rock in the style of, say, Galaxie 500, you know the kind of record I mean: they're long on atmosphere, and the really good ones making themselves known only after you find yourself a spot amongst the beds of spindly guitars and hushed drums. If you're fond of such records, it won't take you long to get acquainted with White Light Strobing.
To paint White Light Strobing as This Is More of Our Music is, of course, reductive. But it's all there, from Nicolas Zwart's unhurried, unaffected vocals to the gentle gyrations of the guitars down to the record's lovely live-in-a-room sound. If Zwart took his vowels down under a bit, his high, clear (but not exactly strong) voice could pass for Dean Wareham's, too. Instrumentally, Desolation Wilderness are almost certainly more accomplished; not a great feat considering the amateurish glee at the heart of so much great Galaxie music, but a point in their column nevertheless. Lyrically, however, it's no contest. Whereas Wareham's moony non-sequiturs helped hang even a lackluster melody among the stars, Zwart's not saying much of anything worth mentioning throughout White Light Strobing. What we're left with is a whole lot of atmosphere-- which will be all too familiar to most folks who find this record-- in search of better songs.
It'd help some if there were more to say about the vocal tracks. Limber though they are on record, Zwart seems to treat his instrumentals with the utmost care: The gently cascading "Road Song" is just pure gorgeousness on wax, and if they play their cards right, it'll soundtrack one hell of a Gap commercial someday. You can practically hear the frost growing on the glistening "Paris to New York", and "Turquoise and Gold" flits around like Chet Atkins playing with Codeine. For the most part, however, the tracks on which Zwart gets a word or two in on don't have the weight to support even the flimsiest of vocal melodies. There are quite a few songs about cars and girls, but nothing that reads more like poetry than a placeholder, and hardly a song with vocals that wouldn't have sounded better with another guitar or something instead. And the songs never sink in, they sound just as willowy and pleasant on first listen as they do on the 20th, and they pass through your ears in much the same manner. It doesn't help that Zwart, a singer in the "Well, guess somebody's gotta do it" school, mumbles his way through half these tunes, often rendering his voice the least interesting element in the mix.
With all that said, it's still easy enough to see an instrumentally assured, atmospherically gifted Desolation Wilderness stepping back from the reverberations on their forebears and cranking out a gem. It's gonna take better songs than these to match the sumptuous swirl they've got down pat here on White Light Strobing, however, and whether that means Zwart spends more or less time pushing the pen around the lyric page, this is a band with greater strengths than they're playing to on White Light Strobing, and one that'd do well to hang some of their glorious noise on something more worthy of it. All those reverberations gotta start from somewhere, after all.
