When we find ourselves this far down the indie highway, you could assume that everything has been tried and tested. From it’s post punk roots pretty much thirty years ago, surely every boundary has been pushed, every barricade rallied against, every cross genre experiment been undertaken. Well maybe it has. Once every avenue has been pursued there really is only one thing you can do. Accept that the laws of the genre have been carved in stone, know your working parameters and just be better than everyone else at putting those rules into play. Whitemoor seem to know this and because of it have emerged as one of best exponents of their genre in recent times.
I guess indie is a bit of a loaded term, full of presumptions and pre-determined expectations on the part of the listener. To clarify, they might start with a foot in the classic indie sound but by layering in rock urgency, synth washes, occasional outbursts of acceptable levels of emo, plus a shed load of melody, groove and accessibility, they end up with a sound that is both classic and familiar but also fresh and new.
Familiar it may be but that doesn’t stop it being clever, and it is certainly big…massive in fact. This is what you want to be listening to as the last light dies at a summer festival, the ultimate in anthemic sounds and euphoric vibes to re-affirm your faith in new music. And I’m sure before long this band will provide the sound track to many peoples festival experience. Horizons is the sound of an underground band muscling in on the party, it is The Killers before they got too big for their boots, it is the sound of the mainstream being subverted just enough so that music cultists and chart watchers alike can feel like Whitemoor are their band.
So maybe what we learn from Whitemoor is that it pays to stick to what you know, err slightly on the side of caution and just do it so much better than everyone else. And they do.
