WV White

I’m happy to say that these guys get the ball rolling from song one (“Allison Lapper, Pregnant”- think of it as the band’s own “Forklift”) and never let up. They don’t wanna choke or smother you to death but you’re not giving them much choice. The rest of side one is equally as good but flip the wax over an side 2 has complete gems like “Multiple Bathrooms” (something I always hope for in a nightclub) “JC’s Songs” and “The Mess.” You’ll hear elements of Pavement, Sonic Yoof and GBV as well as those wobbly songs that the Flying Nun label released a few decades ago (and if when you see them live, WV White’s drum stands topple over don’t blame it on the band, blame it on the manufacturers, sheesh, does NO ONE want to take accountability for things these days?). - Daggerzine

It’s a hard trick, writing songs that are at once elating and sustain a complex state of unease. The Grifters did it a whole lot in the mid-to-late 90s; Archers of Loaf did a similar thing with White Trash Heroes. Columbus, Ohio’s WV White achieve a similar feat on their new album West Virginia White: it gets its hooks into you, but there’s a howl of discontent that runs through the album. Writing about them in Still Single, Doug Mosurock noted, “In a time where the vox populi indie rock calls for warmth and safety, here is a peal of defiance, a refusal to take the medication prescribed in order to bask in the sickness of the self.” - Vol.1 Brooklyn

Streaming free right now, one of the best bands in Ohio, think Nikki Sudden after drinking three bottles of Nyquil, and you are stumbling into it.
Thick and delirious, like those Crippled Pilgrim recs from the end of Reagan’s first term slowed down to three quarter speed…on Bela K-K’s Anyway Records in 2014. Perfect. - Fuckin' Record Reviews

I really wanted to write that Columbus band WV White got their name from the documentary the Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. But I just read an interview with band in Agit Reader that stated they took their name from a butterfly. I am using that as an intro just so we both know the first idea that comes to mind when you read their name, and new album title West Virginia White is a wrong assumption.

I also wanted to write they are a Dustin White tribute band but that is not true either. WV White’s self-titled album on Anyway Records starts off with “Angela Lapper, Pregnant,” the title of which does reference the Marc Quin Sculpture of the limbless British artist who was featured in the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony.

But it is not an inspirational “Wind Beneath My Wings” type track, nor is it a strange acrotomophilia love song. It clambers out with gazey, lazy guitars which lead to synths and drums that lay the backdrop for a man to sing a song of bereft love.Towards the end of the song, slightly-muted guitar parts repeat at points which adds strength and completes the song, which could be about the sad beauty of a person stripped of their devices and persevering.

Track two is called “Ford Mustang,” but it sounds like they are singing about a Rav4.

Track three, “Macha,” takes its name from an Irish Goddess.

This song is interesting because it has two false starts. The first false start begins with the game show organs from the intro of De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising.” The second false start with the singer strumming a guitar, and bellows out in an late 90s slacker-ish voice, “You Never Loved Me/Until You Thought I Hate You/ But I Don’t.” He stops for a second, and utters an expletive and then pauses for a restart after the claps from “3 Feet High and Rising” subside.The song regroups with the the same lyric which leads to the singer’s explanation over a peppy drum pace and optimistic melody.

Track four, “Cockroaches,” is a piano ballad seemingly about the possible hazards in life and fears. - Columbus Free Press

Though Tyler Travis described himself as an introvert — he said in high school he was the quiet kid who tended to keep his head down in the hallways — the WVWhite singer/guitarist never once felt uncomfortable taking the stage with his band.

“It has never really bothered me,” said Travis, 21, in a recent phone interview. “I liked my songs. I thought they were good enough. There’s a lot of garbage out there people really like, so why not give it a shot?”

It helped, of course, that the frontman grew up idolizing musicians; his father, a home improvement contractor, drummed for rowdy locals The Gunshy Ministers in the mid-’90s, and Travis regularly attended rock shows by bands like the Meat Puppets at places like The Summit, Cafe Bourbon Street and Carabar.

“My dad would call [the venues] when I was like 16 [and ask] ‘Is it cool if I bring my son?’ I thought I was hot s---,” Travis said. “He would always talk about how the Columbus music scene was so beautiful and how all the best bands were on Anyway Records.”

Fittingly, WVWhite will release its still untitled full-length debut (“I thought about calling it The White Album, but I haven’t run that by anybody else yet,” Travis said) this January on none other than Anyway, bringing the singer’s childhood dreams full circle.

As with the band’s debut EP, Enter: WVWhite, a hazy, guitar-laden effort that sounds like the work of a bunch of kids who grew up idolizing indie-rockers like Built to Spill (precisely because it was), Travis wrote many of the songs on the full-length as he struggled with depression and isolation.

“I wrote a lot of the new album … when I first started college [at Ohio Wesleyan University],” he said. “I felt like I didn’t make friends here because I was in a band and down in Columbus every weekend. When I’m going through a weird period [songwriting] comes more naturally.”

Even so, WVWhite songs tend to be far from autobiographical, and Travis has penned tunes inspired by everything from Henry Miller’s novel “Tropic of Capricorn” to a sculpture by British artist Marc Quinn of a pregnant Alison Lapper.

“[My songs] are 50-percent metaphor and 50-percent nonsense,” Travis said. “I’m very self-conscious of writing music that’s too personal. I write the songs, but I don’t want them to apply too much to me as an individual. I always want them to be WVWhite songs.” - Columbus Alive