White Williams Smoke CD

The "It" boy of the 2007 SXSW festival, White Williams is a laptop balladeer who mimics the minimalist sounds of '80s synth-wavers like Pylon and New Order. These bubbly songs are long on melody, suiting Williams's sonorous croon, and his recording technique seems more about preserving the feel of the original post-punk era rather than making any great production strides: the beats are simple, dotted with Casio bleats and airy chord structures that foreground the vocals and synth hooks. Just 23 years old when he recorded this 2007 debut, Williams accurately appropriates the aesthetics of his birth era, and if it isn't wildly inventive, it is at least a faithful distillation of all that rocked about the '80s underground.
Joe Williams may be based in Cleveland and New York City, but Smoke shows that White Williams' heart resides in a fantasy version of '70s England, where glam rock, punk, electronics, and sleaze, detachment, and wit reign supreme. White Williams' music has drawn comparisons to contemporaries from Beck to Vampire Weekend, but the inclusive playfulness of Brian Eno's early solo albums feels like a more relevant touchstone for this album's friendly experimentalism -- like Eno, Williams combines the really weird and the really poppy so that they complement each other instead of competing with each other. "In the Club" pairs gritty, glittery glam rock guitars and electro-pop irony so that they sound perfect, and perfectly natural together; "Danger" takes glam's infamous slow shuffle beat and surrounds it with short-circuiting synths. Smoke's palette of sounds is pretty remarkable, with guitars that shimmy, bounce, and buzz colliding with oddly childlike backing vocals and synths that sparkle and crackle. Everything sounds like it's been slicked in oil or wrapped in spandex, to the point where "Going Down"'s paranoid pop feels as though it could slip right off the album. It's Smoke's nonstop catchiness that makes it really special, however. Though "Lice in the Rainbow" closes the album with a burst of streaky and insectoid synths, even this tangent hovers around the length of a classic pop song. Meanwhile, "Route to Palm" and "Fleetwood Crack" have winsome melodies that feel strangely familiar, and make the sexily aloof cover of "I Want Candy" blend in even more seamlessly with the rest of Smoke. "Headlines" could be a long-lost single from the late '70s, while "New Violence"'s glistening new wave finds inspiration from just a few years later. Crucially, though, Smoke never sounds dated or rehashed -- instead, it's a fresh, consistently creative, and consistently listenable debut. ~ Heather PharesSpin (p.126) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Echoing the scruffy synth pop of early Brian Eno....Williams cobbles together a likably ragtag version of electronica."
Alternative Press (p.188) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t earnestly mixes and matches elements from electronic music and rock's past to conjure fresh reconfigurations of those genres."
Q (Magazine) (p.148) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "He's certainly capable of creating slinky grooves: the spacey beats of 'In The Club' and 'Headlines' evoke Bolan and Bowie..."
Blender (Magazine) (pp.154-155) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[H]e turns into an unholy Brian Eno-philiac, a connoisseur of Kraut-rock throbs and woozy sideways guitar solos..."