Julien Ehrlich, the falsetto-singing drummer of Chicago indie band Whitney, has long written songs about heartbreak, including their viral, breakthrough hit, 2016’s “No Woman.”
So to hear that he’s now married came as a happy surprise, even if his newly found romantic bliss still comes with a bit of lingering anxiety.
“I’ve been spending time in Denmark because that’s where my wife is currently,” Ehrlich said. “(But) it’s been hard, honestly, dealing with the immigration process. The plan is to have her move over here eventually. But obviously we know that there’s been some changes in our bureaucratic systems. So who knows? It all feels a little bit scary to be honest.”
Right now, Ehrlich is feeling the distance from his wife, as Whitney is wrapping up its summer tour, with the final stop slated for Aug. 15 at Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo. Earlier this year, the band opened for alt/folk group Caamp, and later this fall Whitney will release their upcoming fourth studio album, Small Talk, on Nov. 7.
Written and self-produced by Ehrlich and fellow Whitney founding member/guitarist Max Kakacek, the core duo recorded the album last summer, with many of their longtime Chicago friends dropping in to add parts.
“That’s really what we’ve been doing for the last two years is writing and recording,” Ehrlich said. “And the mixing process was really long. We played a couple shows here and there, and we’re still like workaholics completely. But at a certain point, you know, flash forward, and we were like, ‘Oh man, we’ve really planted serious roots back in Chicago again. So it feels almost like when we first went on tour as a band.”
Ehrlich and Kakacek started Whitney in 2015, after Kakacek departed 2000s indie-rock band Smith Westerns, and Ehrlich left psychedelic outfit Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Immediately crafting a nostalgic, country-soul inspired sound, perfect for warm sunny days, Whitney soon became a favorite on the festival circuit, playing both Pitchfork Music Festival and Lollapalooza in Chicago, as well as Coachella, Newport Folk Festival, and others all across the country.
The band has also toured internationally, racking up runs in the UK, Europe, and Australia, with a recent stop at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal alongside acts like TV on the Radio, Future Islands, and Gracie Abrams, earlier this month.
“Introducing some of the new songs to the set, it just feels like a much like deeper setlist,” Ehrlich said of the band’s new live show. “There’s more intricate songs. There’s poppier moments. It just feels like we’ve naturally become more mature musicians.”
Whitney has previewed the new album with the release of the new single, “Dandelion,” and album track “Darling,” earlier this summer. “Dandelion” springs from yet another place of heartache as Ehrlich describes how it came after both he and Kakacek had moved across the country to Portland to pursue previous relationships, only to have both abruptly end, leaving them confused, and mourning the future they thought they might have had.
“There’s some surprising songs that sound a little more like The Band or something,” Ehrlich said, adding that they’d also been listening to a lot of Nick Drake while working on the record.
There’s one track in particular that he said pulls from “theatrical nature” of Neil Young’s “A Man Needs A Maid,” cementing Whitney’s return to its strong ‘70s influences after the creative departure of their last album, 2022’s Spark.
“I feel like the people who have heard the new record have called it a mature take on the first two, like on the earlier sound,” Ehrlich said. “We obviously needed to break away from the sound that we had sort of honed in on, or developed, on the first two records. Take a little space away from all of that. And even finishing the last one, it feels like that was sort of the only way that we were going to be able to come back and breathe new life into songs that really feel like they could only be made by us.”
Although there is a certain lightness to Whitney’s music, Ehrlich’s lyrics have often dealt with darker, sadder subject matter, and he said this time around, with the current climate in the country, there was no shortage of inspiration for that side of the band’s music as well.
“It’s not hard to feel sad in our country right now,” he said. “I think pretty naturally we like to just jam on some uplifting material, but yeah, I think that’s a balance that has always come naturally to us.”
As for the album’s title, Ehrlich said he hates making small talk, especially post-pandemic, when the nature of small talk seems to have become even more superficial.
“You can sort of approach (the album) as if it’s going to be like easy listening,” Ehrlich said. “But there might be a moment in a song where you’re like, ‘Oh my God,’ and that really impacts you… We made a concerted effort to really pour over the lyrics on the record and make sure that there’s moments that really feel weighty, and feel like they can kind of smack you over the head, in a way, or over the heart.”
Whitney
Wsg. Bonny Doon
Bell’s Brewery, 355 E. Kalamazoo Ave., Kalamazoo
Aug. 15, 7 p.m. doors, 8 p.m. show, $34.29 advance, 18 and older
