Whirlwind Heat - 'Do Rabbits Wonder?' (Third Man/XL)
4/5
By: Joshua K
Admit it. When you heard that White Stripes main-man Jack White had become a record-label boss, your initial vision was of a second-tier garage band army marching through the charts. Then you realized that White was too smart, and too talented a musician, to settle for the obvious.
Thank God for that. For the only way White's first signings, Whirlwind Heat, can be compared to the Stripes is as antithesis of. In their instrumentation - bass, drums and synths, rather than Jack's guitar-only credo - and their sound: punk-funk, rather than blues-punk.
But even calling the 'Heat 'punk-funk' is a misnomer, because Liars and The Rapture this ain't. Those bands want you to shake your ass; this lot are more likely to inspire you to run like hell. In other words, this is funk down the rabbit hole, 'A Clockwork Orange' horror-show funk, as played by Alex and his Droogies.
So, for the price of admission, you get thirteen tracks of ultra-violence with colors for names (orange, black, green, red, etc.). Collectively, they use skittering, jittering, juddering sonics and yelping, howling vox to evoke emotions from anxiety to lust to rage. The end result is a primal panic attack of a record: brutal; angular; always teetering on the edge, yet never collapsing.
Not for the unadventurous, then. Everyone else will be kicked, slapped, punched, challenged - and eventually rewarded.
Artists in this article: Whirlwind Heat
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