Album Review: Whitey - Lost Summer

After releasing only two albums in eight years, Whitey has suddenly dropped three albums in three months. Admittedly, two of those serve as reworkings of aborted projects but still, it means Whitey is still wavering towards the Phil Spector-end of the musical-eccentrics-scale.

Reckon that's an exaggeration? Then glance your eyes across song titles such as Saturday Night Ate Our Lives and Civilizashun/Nobody Made The Monster. The industry outsider was once the buzz act of the pre-indie electro days - his music was wanted by everyone from mixtape compilers, Visa Card, the producers of Entourage and the makers of Grand Theft Auto. But once Jack Sparrow proved to be the only pirate without a copy of Whitey's planned second album, he withdrew from the public eye to rage against the humans.

Lost Summer is a gentle comeback/comedown album. The perfect companion to 2005's dark party piece Light At The End Of The Tunnel. The two albums fit (disinfected) hand in rubber-gloved-fist.

"Something has to change now, " warns Whitey in Saturday Night Ate Our Lives. Though it sounds like a chirpier Cut Copy moment, Saturday Night... laments the clubbing nights of old and takes toll of the damage done: "Saturdays stretched to an endless line, the mornings as far as the end of time, and if we don't lose our heads, then we'll all be fine... Saturday night was our promised land... and we reached for ourselves when we raised our hands."

For Whitey now, there are "just too many people" (People). He seems content to be this self-contained artist/business, alone with his sounds that can evoke a pre-rave era: motorik (Nobody Made The Monster, Dead Eyes), a touch of The Residents (Get By) and a tad The The (Lost Summer ).

But not that he's all about wallowing in the past. Brief And Bright takes its cues from 2 Bears-type ambidisco and See You Next Time should see Whitey become the envy of every Brooklyn lo-fi electro troubadour.