Whitney K: Bubble

“It can be hard for tramps for us / When the only way out might kill you first”, sings Konner Whitney on Heaven – the opening track from Whitney K’s latest release, Bubble. In some ways it feels like an underdog’s take on Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run – the sentiment, not a world away at least, as Whitney has spent the last decade spinning the kind of dry-witted yarns that would pique the interest of any Lou Reed disciple.

Whitney has been the practitioner of the kind of AM laments that turn a lonely nightshift worker’s life upside down. Songs that speak to you and not at you, while the preceding years have seen Whitney K as the king pin of the Maple Death Records label (that role now down to label founder himself, James Johnathan Clancy), the Canadian-born artist makes the jump to Fire Records for his most expansive release yet.

Joined by a slew of guests (the core being Josh Boguski – guitar; Michael Halls – bass; Avalon Tassonyi – drums; and Talia Boguski – vocals), Whitney’s songs on Bubble reach new spaces. Not only for the secluded nightshift operative but also for many more, Whitney’s songs are like stories within stories that are cobbled together from a vast book collection.

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The worn-into-the-groove Heaven radiates with a warmth that thaws out the ice this world has to offer (“Heaven is waiting, but Jesus Christ I’m bored”). It’s somewhere between Reed homage and the irreverence of Bill Callahan. (Speaking of the latter, Whitney goes full flex on The Ocean, echoing Bill with added caffeine.)

Love songs are a feature on Bubble, and the first of them is Something Strange, while the saccharine Freud Estate follows shortly after. Both evoke that floaty feeling when, indeed, you’re “falling in love”, which is at the other end of the spectrum to the hazy swoon of Jolene and the skeletal echoes of We’ll See. Nomadic roadhouse folk that is like the duct tape that mends a broken heart. These tales, so vivid that it’s clear Whitney has lived these moments, weaving cold hard facts with sharp fiction.

Meanwhile, TV Dreaming is new-era Whitney K. The band-in-a-room vibe, erecting the sound from the floor up, it’s the first real sign of Whitney reaching for the upper echelons and he’s not out of place there. On Sunshine2, he combines past and present, with a drug-inspired number that’s so effortless, it sounds as if it dropped out of the sky like a gift from the heavens (“I’ve done a lot of drugs / But I ain’t so numb”).

So too Morning After, which is a song that artists write at their peak (“When strangers collide, what doth thou they mean with the war in your mind”). Apocalypse Rock deals with a similar war, as Whitney’s tale is bathed in Ben Vallee’s sweet pedal steel inflections and Tassonyi’s symbols that hiss under the mix. And the best of Whitney K keeps rolling with Rosy. It’s a song many would dream of writing themselves; a measure that distinguishes which artists stay in your life and those who don’t.

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Rosy sees Whitney at his happiest, and that doesn’t change with closing cut, Lately. A glow-wave folk number where striving for mediocrity, a morning coffee and walking the dog quickly fills up the day. As a sleepy-eyed Whitney leans into the microphone singing, “Waking up feeling new / Nothing better than nothing to do / Lately, I’ve been doing all right”, it’s something we’d all do a lot worse than aspire to in this fast-paced world.

It’s arguably the biggest take out on Bubble. Whitney doesn’t take himself seriously, easing the burden for his listeners while doing so. His songs, untangling the knots in the mind, pointing out the simple facets of life that we take for granted are the most important ones of all.

Bubble is out now via Fire Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.