The Whigs - Mission Control

Mission Control

ATO Records

Here is my list of demands: Try to get past the unfortunate cover art, the uninspired album title, and the misleading band name (no, it’s not a contentious or incomplete reunion of the Afghan Whigs a la the Funky Meters). Try not to get hung up on the critical buzz that the music is too derivative, that the Whigs sounds too much like this or that band. Try to keep yourself in the present moment, where your face is being rocked off.

Because if you can do that, Mission Control will reward you handsomely, with blistering pop hooks charging right out of the gate. Yes, opener “Like a Vibration” sounds a bit like the Pixies, and “I Got Ideas” a little like Spoon, but since when was that a bad thing? It’s not as if those bands’ sounds were woven from whole cloth. Nothing is new under the sun, especially in rock music. And if a band rocks this hard and catchy, they can get away with the proudly-displayed influences on their sleeves.

Frontman/guitarist Parker Gispert has a protean voice bearing the blessings of fond familiars: in just one such instance, you can envy him for managing to channel both Michael Hutchence and Joe Strummer on “Production City.” As he moves through these songs, bringing just the right timbre to each line, you realize Gispert’s voice is perfect for this milieu: plaintive but never whiny; triumphant when his bandmates turn things up to eleven; playful during the jangly stretches. His is the thinking/drinking man’s delivery we’ve come to cherish in Bob Pollard, Joe Pernice, and John Roderick.

Most of these songs are compact scorchers, but any doubts that the band can’t be epic are allayed by “Sleep Sunshine,” whose titular components are represented, respectively, by lullaby-like guitar arpeggios and swooping pedal steel. After the second chorus the song is broken wide open by overdubbed toms, tumbling down from the rafters before giving way to yet another layer of guitar—this time a grand bombardment of high, sustained tones. Finally, the song waltzes to a lilting close, but not before one last loud, rich refrain incorporating—holy shit, is that a Mellotron?

So I know it’s difficult, but please try put aside the rock-critic shorthand of soundalike name-checking (which, hell, even I couldn’t resist). Please focus instead on the ample reasons people thrall to rock music in the first place: the way Gispert’s voice and guitar fishtail all over the louder numbers; the grand panoramics of “Sleep Sunshine,” “1000 Wives,” and the title track; the way Dorio’s propulsive drumming gets out in front of the groove like a cow-catcher, keeping the sound at a fortissimo that’ll shake the walls of the tiny venues where this band should ideally perform. In fact, this album is probably only a simulacrum of the pure Whigs experience: a sweaty, beer-sodden club show in Athens or Iowa City or Portland where they can be in their true raucous, summery element. So if you only meet one of my demands, make it this one: catch the Whigs at such a venue, before their rising profile renders it impossible.

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