Brian Whelan makes the familiar sound new
In 2013, Brian Whelan released an album called “Decider,” which turned out to be prescient because two years later he made the biggest decision of his musical career.
A versatile and intuitive multi-instrumentalist capable of playing just about anything with strings or keys, Whelan had an enviable job doing just that with Dwight Yoakam’s band. But his job kept him from promoting “Decider” — a hooky and wellseasoned set of songs that fell into a style of oldschool melodic rock ’n’ roll that has spawned dozens of descriptors over the years —“the hyphenated era,” Whelan calls it, referring to power-pop, garage-pop, rootsrock and other tags.
So Whelan left a world of security, rare in the 21st-century music business, and emerged this month with “Sugarland,” a brisk and brilliant album that could and should court listeners who appreciate a tightly wound three-minute song, whether it falls under country, pop, rock or some other invented subgenre.
“American music is going to outlive us all,” he sings on opener “Americana,” which speaks to the musical territory Whelan works.
“None of those labels made sense to me,” he says. “Power pop or Americana. I like things described as power pop, but you label something that way and I envision five middle-aged dudes in Big Star shirts showing up. I’d like to expand beyond that. I’d like those five guys. But I also don’t want to back myself in a corner.”
Yoakam provided a model for success. For 30 years, he’s ignored trends and made his own genre based around honkytonk, ’60s British Invasion and girl groups, and other styles that over the years caught his ear.
“Dwight never sat me down and told me this, but he really doesn’t give a (expletive) if he’s difficult to categorize,” Whelan says. “You see the big hat, the tight jeans, hear the big high whine of a voice, but to me he sounds like a guy making his own music fronting a rock ’n’ roll band.”
Whelan folds different flavors into his own songs, but the effect is the same: finding a way to make the familiar sound new. A Seattle native, he’s spent enough time in Los Angeles to be fluent in a long-running Southern Californian tradition of making dark lyrics sound sunny. Case in point: The bright, sing-songy “bombs away!” refrain in the song “Suckerpunch.”
“That sort of thing isn’t planned exactly, but it makes sense after 16 years here,” he says. “That sense of angelic harmonies in this paradise that could erupt and slide into the ocean. That balance between the gentler sounds of a Beach Boys or Eagles balanced by X or the Blasters, who reflect the grittier side. Or Warren Zevon, who might be the best example of that light and dark thing. That idea of singing sociopathic lyrics with buoyant music.”
The light/dark contrast opens his new album. “Americana” is a blistering condemnation of musical conformity and group think that has created a spike in big beards and banjo sales. Though barbed, the song carefully steers away from cynicism and into a celebration of what Whelan really loves: the early-American rock by guys like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly that keep showing up in various places in popular music, whether it’s the Beatles, AC/DC, Marshall Crenshaw or Dwight Yoakam. He draws from the same rudiments that have been in place more than 60 years.
Having revved up, Whelan slows things down a little on the second song, the album’s title track.
Whelan has spent several years in a relationship with a woman from Sugar Land, which, in part, informed the song that gave the album its title. Sugar Land is a rich name for a writer to work with, which Whelan admits, bringing up “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Up on Cripple Creek,” as song titles with evocative destinations, even if those two destinations are made up. For him, Sugar Land was similarly intriguing, with the implied sweetness and its outsider’s proximity to a larger locale.
“It defined this part of my life when I was making the record,” Whelan says. “So it’s a love song to my girlfriend, but there’s also a little love letter to Houston in there.”
The love shines through: The song “Sugarland” is joyously melodic, with a scruffy, laidback charm. “I’m just elated to be waiting in Sugarland,” Whelan sings, quite possibly a sentiment that has never before been voiced.
Whelan has enjoyed enough success in Houston to make it a recurring destination.
“I was really lucky to find this built-in audience for what I do,” he says. “There was some demand for it, not somebody doing me a favor. So it’s been a great place for me.”
Prior to his time with Yoakam, Whelan played several instruments in the indie rock band the Broken West. Considering his past experience, there was no question “Sugarland” would sound good, but he’s also emerged as a lyricist unafraid to pick at thorny issues.
On “Go Dancing,” he sings “my only swinging partner is my jealousy.” “Suckerpunch” is particularly rough, “about feeling so bad about yourself that you (expletive) up something good,” he says. “It may not be flattering to observe that in yourself. But if you can’t put it in a song then you might as well quit.”
So he put it in the song, because Whelan traded security for uncertainty when he left Yoakam’s band and his new page required bold writing. He took with him some of Yoakam’s accrued wisdom about making songs without compromise. And he left behind not just reliable work and regular pay. Whelan also had to turn in his band uniform. The rhinestone-studded coat was a piece of hillbilly armor flashy enough to make contact with life forms on other planets.
“I’ll be honest, that coat makes you feel 10-feet tall when you’re wearing it,” he says. “But I felt like if I was going to do this, I had to really commit to doing it.”