White Orange – Self Titled

For the past couple months I’ve tried my best to get into White Orange’s hard-nosed brand of sludgy stoner grunge.  But try as I might, the slow crawl of the Portland, Oregon-based four-piece eludes me.  The group plays a stewing brand of heavy psychedelic patterns and feedback fed vocals that ted to saturate in their own juices more often than they reach out and challenge listeners.  It’s kind of like Nirvanameets Sabbath without either’s defining features.

Truth told, for the first few songs I thought White Orange might be on to something.  Opener “Where” in particular settles early into some intensely heavy and grooves, and bears a mouthful of crunchy distorted riffs featuring a jangling, disjointed feedback.  I imagine the band’s goal is to plant a steady rhythm deep inside your veins, and for the first few minutes they achieve just that.  Unfortunately the group heavily relies on their audience to see these first few impressions as original and fresh, and for them to stay that way across the next nine tracks.  The fact that most run times average somewhere around four or five minutes doesn’t help matters either.  So when “Color Me Black” reduces the tempo to a slow crawl and pummels the same awkwardly repeated chord sequences, the mood switches from aggressive to common, and stunts the impact of grinders like “Dinosaur Bones” or “Wonderful.”

The remainder of the disc follows suit aside from a few jarring segments.  “Middle Of The Riddle” for instance lays claim to a simple stop-n-go guitar rhythm that should jolt listeners awake like an electric charge, as well as “Kill the Kids” which dabbles in some uniquely pitchy chord choices just different enough to stand apart from its less remarkable neighbours.  “Save Me’s” sole acoustic start hints at a new direction, but ends with another highly repetitive seven-minute incher.

While the premise of a heavy psychedelic rock out sounds intriguing, I just can’t look past the self-titled effort’s nearly forty-five minutes of crawling repetition.  I imagine those already in tune with the whole stoner rock thing will understand White Orange’s intent, but it’s not very conducive to relative newcomers like myself.