White Orange
Onawa
Made in China Records
Street: 08.06
White Orange = Queens of the Stone Age + The Jesus and Mary Chain + Neurosis
After a relatively successful and intriguing debut album, White Orange appear to be stepping away from the snappy rock tunes of their self-titled and into the realm of spacey atmospherics. Yet as much as they try to distance themselves from the quirky guitar rumblings of Josh Homme, Onawa is still heavily influenced by QOTSA and Kyuss. This sensibility becomes borderline intolerable on “…and I Leave the Circus,” which repeats its angular riff again and again throughout the song with virtually no changes. It doesn’t help that vocalist Dustin Hill sounds perpetually bored, a la Paul Allen of The Heads. Space rock can be done right, but it needs energy and urgency, two qualities that Onawa lacks almost implicitly. –Henry Glasheen