THE WHITE EP

Dreary. It's a word I hate, since I've rarely heard it said without a whining cadence and a north English accent. Dreariness is also something I hate in music and something copious on The White. It's not quite goth, not really the same as sadness, nowhere near anger or fire, not even possessing the feeling of a jam but simply a way to describe the blasé attempts to fill up musical time; listening to a band happy to record such dismal nothingness really disturbs me in a profound way.

There's no fun to be had with The White and if anything on it will incite you, it'll be the vocal clips occasionally layered over the limboid music drollness, since they're far more eloquent than this band will ever become. Everything else on the record is muffled strumming and whispers or else ambience of a kind that puts in you mind of no era or place but rather of wasted time. Perhaps that, at least, could bring out a little regret.

Don't mistake these songs for mood pieces, for laments or for folk (where's the storytelling nature, the risqué yet lovable rhymes or the energy that comes from sincerity?) - Agalloch have recorded half-an-hour of pure tedium and directed it toward fans of hypnotic music; that's a term that gets used in the press as synonymous with trance-inducing but in The White's case, the literal sense is more appropriate. NOTHING HAPPENS ON THIS ALBUM.