Pushing the boundaries
Whitehorse stretches styles and storytelling on Panther in the Dollhouse
It’s a burden for any musical act made up of a husband-and-wife team.
Ever since Melissa McClelland and husband Luke Doucet put their respective solo careers on hold seven years ago to concentrate on Whitehorse, you would be hard-pressed to find an article written about them that doesn’t address the spousal dynamic and its impact on the band.
It’s just too tantalizing a hook. “It does drive us crazy a bit that that’s been the focus of our story,” says McClelland, even as this particular interview falls into the same trap. “But we also understand it. It’s a big, big part of the chemistry that we have as musicians, copartners. The love that we have for each other definitely bleeds into the creative process and the music we make and the way that we perform.”
Still, McClelland admits there is a mischievous side to the duo that would love to have fun with the idea, particularly with those keen to dissect song lyrics in search of insight into real relationships. Are there hints of the sort of romantic mess that begat Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, for instance, or the withering marriage that was reportedly at the bruised heart of Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights?
“We love the idea of making people think whatever they want to think,” McClelland says. “They probably don’t realize it’s way more fictional than anything.”
In fact, Whitehorse’s superb new album, Panther in the Dollhouse, is chock full of songs centred on interesting but fictional characters. While Doucet and McClelland have never really subscribed to a confessional style of songwriting, this album seems to be haunted with their widest array yet of unique outsider voices. There are the rock-star wannabes of the electrifying first single Boys Like You; the desperate refugees of Kick Down Your Door; the trophy wife of Trophy Wife; and the at-risk sex workers of Nighthawks.
“I feel like we took it a step further on this record,” McClelland says. “Not intentionally, but at some point during the process we realized there was a strong character in pretty much all the songs and we even came close to actually naming all those characters. I don’t think we actually did that. But, yeah, there is a kind of
throughline story that emerged somewhere along the line.”
If Panther in the Dollhouse stretched the Toronto-based duo lyrically, it also offers their most colourful palette to date when it comes to musical styles. Long gone are the days when Whitehorse could be considered an earnest folk duo, although that label still tends to stubbornly cling to the act.
The songs on Whitehorse’s fourth studio album have elements of electro, pop, blues, garage-rock, country, trip hop and, on the gorgeous Die Alone, even hints of power balladry. They are all wrapped in the trademark slashing guitar lines Doucet provides on his White Falcon Gretsch and beautiful two-part harmonies.
Recorded with producer Gus Van Go and with the help of Likeminds, a New York-based beatmakers and production duo, Panther in the Dollhouse is certainly a genrehopping affair. But regardless of the adventurous roads the songs may have taken, most started as acoustic numbers.
That’s been the modus operandi of Whitehorse since the beginning, with McClelland and Doucet writing their songs separately.
“We do like to go off to our own corners of the house and do our writing,” McClelland says. “It’s funny, I drive Luke crazy because part of my process when I’m writing a song is to play it a million times. He’s like ‘Oh my God, stop playing that song!’ So by the time we present our songs to each other, we kind of know them inside and out. We’ll notice similar themes come up on both of our songs. It’s probably this very subconscious process where we are hearing what the other person is doing from the other room and it’s floating into our room and our brain and seeping in and somehow coming out in the creative process.”
Doucet and McClelland both put in time backing up Sarah McLachlan while maintaining solo careers. They two married in 2006 and formed Whitehorse in 2011, with both agreeing to put their own careers on hold.
Up until the most recent tour, Whitehorse has performed as a two-piece. This was no quaint acoustic duo, however. The pair performed multiple instruments over pre-recorded loops, a complicated experiment that needed to be meticulously planned and choreographed. It was a fun, if precarious, musical adventure for the couple and quite the spectacle to watch. McClelland says it also helped solidify Whitehorse as a band rather than “two singersongwriters coming together.”
Nevertheless, with Panther at the Dollhouse, Whitehorse is touring as a full, five-piece rock band, retiring the “two-headed monster” incarnation for now.
“It came to a point where it was a bit exhausting,” says McClelland. “Now, playing with the band, it’s so easy and fun. It just feels like rock ’n’ roll. It feels like music.”