Introducing: Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day

I think hearing this album lived changed the trajectory of my life forever.

If you enjoy any music that resembles the shoe gaze genre, I've got you covered. Welcome to your new favourite album to drown out all your thoughts to.

Incase you're unaware, this is the second album released by the alternative, melancholic rock band, Whitelands. Although the group currently has around 35,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, this is bound to increase rapidly. It is so inspiring to see a band consisting of people of colour, prospering in a genre dominated white men, curating incredible, emotive music that resonates with the heart and soul.

In this project, the band explores topics that are dear to the members, such as love and racism. This being very prevalent in songs such as ‘Now Here’s The Weather’ and ‘Born In Understanding’, both consisting of meticulous lyricism. I think my personal favourites from this album must be ‘The Prophet & I’ and ‘How It Feels’. Both songs display Etienne Quartey-Papafio’s great vocal potential, in my opinion.

Jangly tones from a plethora of different guitars, doused in reverb and delay, give these songs such a dreamy base layer, with perfect volume and effect control in the verse and chorus of each song. Interesting and creative bass lines cut through the songs giving them a groove not often found within this style of music, helping the band to stand out from the crowd in an increasingly saturated genre. The percussion is also a noteworthy aspect of the band’s personal sound, with thought-provoking flair thrown into the songs through the drum fills, and Jagun Meseorisa’s mellow backing vocals helping to tie the band’s symphonic sound together. Meseorisa’s ability to provide such a strong vocal performance whilst playing the drums live was undeniably impressive to me. Quartey-Papafio’s lead vocals alongside this make for the perfect balance of contrasting vocal tones throughout the album.

The best way to describe this project is 8 songs and 33 minutes of a beautiful, meditative mesh of sounds to tune out the world to. I can’t recommend this album to anyone enough.