Flow West to You

Endless White

Flow West to You

(Taihe Music)

When I was a kid in the early 90s falling head over heels in love with music, most specifically, the “shoegaze” coming from the UK, I never thought I’d see its influence permeate so strongly 25+ years later all over the world.  I mean, seriously, we all may now think of Slowdive, Ride, and Lush as hugely successful bands garnering rave reviews and sold out shows, but that is only in recent times.  Though they received a couple of years’ worth of heavy coverage in the British music weeklies, they were quickly and actively dismissed as passé – in favor of the next big scene.  The term shoegaze was meant as an insult.  Giving these hyper-creative artists the brush off, essentially because they weren’t full of headline grabbing rock-n-roll wankers attempting to be needlessly provocative.  They were all about the sound – that oh-so wonderful sound.  My experience with this music in the Pacific Northwest is that there shows were marginally attended, their music was not given any local airplay or exposure, there was really only one record store that actively stocked the newest releases, and most people were simply unaware.  These days, those British weeklies no longer exert a huge influence, the record industry has been completely revamped, and aside from a handful of artists, music is fragmented and narrow-casted to the point that no one really knows what’s out there beyond their own streaming playlist.  Somehow, despite its brief window of exposure so many years ago, the wonderful influence of these so-called shoegaze bands of yore has fed into a burgeoning worldwide scene today.

Endless White are a four-piece from China and their brand of dreamy guitar pop sits comfortably with the greats of that original foregone era.  Though, I’m not big on hyper-specific music genre classification, I would say that Endless White are not a classic shoegaze style band, Endless White channel that dramatic ebb and flow of the best dream pop music, while evoking large doses of the rainy day reflection of the early stuff by The Sundays, or maybe that great album by Just Handshakes (Say It) from five years ago.  Flow West to You is Endless White’s debut album after a previous EP back in 2016.  I know nothing else about them, but that isn’t important.  What they’ve created on this collection is a group of amazing songs that elevate me to higher plane of existence. 

The album opens deliberately with the band’s title track, “Endless White,” which sets a somber and intense mood.  Repeated reverbed guitar strikes above a skittering beat act as an introduction before settling into a nice groove that lays the groundwork for the transcendent vocals of Zhang Wanyl.  Meanwhile, the next two songs are the most straightforwardly shoegaze tracks, “Slow to Crush,” Wanyl channels her upper register and floats her dreamy voice into the mix of soft splashing cymbals and crashing guitar fuzz (not too dissimilar from what we’ve heard so far from the new Belgium band Slow Crush), while the spacious “Daylight Burnt Down” is unbelievably heartbreaking in its beauty. Its chiming guitar lead leads us down a reflective path before exploding into a dramatic fiery crescendo and then closing quietly, unresolved.

Endless White perform with such passion.  You can feel the emotion in the notes they play.  The greatest example of this is the brilliant “A Lost Dog Story.”  I immediately fell in love with Wanyl’s voice on this song.  Her warm, yet reserved delivery matches the forlorn reflective stroll the song presents.  This is a case where I long to know the lyrics, though I can feel its longing sadness permeate every note performed right down to the casual drum pattern.  Another standout is the heavy “Nothing to Regret,” which slowly builds to an exciting and explosive conclusion.  On the penultimate track, Endless White take on the ancient Scottish hymn, “Auld Lang Syne,” – that song we’re duty bound to sing as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve – and it fits right in.  Theirs is a rainy version with a tasteful two minute introduction before bursting into that classic refrain amongst a soaring din of amazing sounds.  Elsewhere, “Some Other Life,” acts as a default pop single due to its crisp and tight melody.

My only complaint with the entire album is with the closing track, “Hit By Me.”  It’s not the song itself, which is a  jaunty sounding ending to an epic set of songs, with Zhang Wanyl’s vocals pushed further out front than elsewhere, and includes a fantastic mid-song transition.  However, the song fades out at what feels like a random point.  It feels a bit of a cheat to conclude such a fantastic album.  Please let this wonderful record flow its way into your life.  It is remarkable.

(https://endlesswhite.bandcamp.com/album/flow-west-to-you)


Here is a video someone made from Endless White's debut EP.