Cover albums tend to be a product of a foundering career. At a point when critical appraisal has dried up and popularity is about to follow, musicians can count on releasing a few covers to bide their time and prolong the inevitable. Even in the best-case scenarios, when more successful artists employ an album of covers, it’s usually just as a way of fulfilling a contractual obligation or legal dispute, a musician’s way of thumbing a nose at an aggressor and producing what usually amounts to the lowest caliber song contributions of their career.
But for every Renegades or Rock ‘n’ Roll, there’s These Foolish Things or Fakebook. These are unabashed albums, made out of charisma instead of greed and excess, bodies of work which sound closer to the artists’ own music than anything else. That’s when these albums work best, not out of necessity but out of amusement.
Chicago’s Whitney are no strangers to covers, taking on Bob Dylan and Wilco in the studio and frequently dolling out NRBQ’s “Magnet” and Allen Toussaint’s “Southern Nights” at shows over the past few years. After releasing their stunning debut Light Upon The Lake back in 2016 and its follow-up, the very good, but not stunning, Forever Turned Around last year, Whitney were in need of a refresher. Recording a few different covers in Chicago as they normally do, the band eventually ended up crafting an entire album, one that will fit nicely into any fan’s preconceived notions.
As with their covers in the past, Whitney’s renditions for the most part offer no radical departures from the source material. Simply strong performances from a talented band that clearly have a love for these songs and a very specific way of playing their music. On Kelela’s “Bank Head” and SWV’s “Rain”, the band is clearly having the most fun, filtering the contrasting genres through their shared lens, and yielding differing returns. While the Kelela cover is sloppy and charming, Whitney’s take on “Rain” makes the track there own, in a way that the best covers do – changing the outlook on the original.
Although working on a smaller scale, Whitney is within their wheelhouse on most of the other tracks. Julien Ehrlich’s vocals are notably well-suited on the Roches’ underrated classic, “Hammond Song” and Moondog’s “High on a Rocky Ledge”, the latter given the extra weight of a full band and being all the better for it. Whitney even manages to take collaboration from Waxahatchee on the oft-covered “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and sell it as something much better than it really should be.
An album of covers can come with a lot of baggage, but for Whitney at this point in their career, Candid not only keeps their hands in the game but provides the kind of light-hearted recording schedule bands need from time to time. They may be treading water, but if their music remains as well-made and appealing as it is, they may just be able to make a career out of it.
