Whitehorse: Am I Just Gonna Stand Here

By Kerry Doole

Whitehorse - Am I Just Gonna Stand Here (While You Take My Girl Away): (Six Shooter Records): The duo of ace singer/songwriters Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland has never followed music industry convention. The pair gleefully switch between genres, and I bet no other artists have been nominated for Junos in the Adult Alternative, Adult Contemporary and Blues Album of the Year categories (Whitehorse won the 2016 Adult Alternative Juno for Leave No Bridge Unburned).

The group is equally unorthodox in its scheduling of releases. Just announced is news that a new full-length, Strike Me Down, comes out on Sept. 10, just six months after an earlier album, Modern Love. A new track, Am I Just Gonna Stand Here (While You Take My Girl Away), will appear on the upcoming record, and it’s a promising harbinger of the music to come.

The track has a slightly retro trippy feel, and features Doucet's trademark resonant guitar and McClelland's pure harmony vocals. Toss in a full production sound and homegrown lyrics ("A girl like you is a diamond, You're like Lake Ontario whitecaps") and you have a winner.

Accompanying the cut is a groovy kaleidoscopic video, another Six Shooter Art Squad creation directed and produced by Lyle Bell and Caitlin Veitch.

A press release declares that the new album "showcases Whitehorse’s masterful, fantastical storytelling and melodic sensibilities, with plenty of space made for guitar shredding, epic bass lines and spaced-out vocal layering. High-impact production and prismatic visuals contribute to Strike Me Down’s high-stakes mood... Whitehorse continue to play with fantasies and realities, theirs and ours."

Bring it on.

Whitehorse has also just released a complimentary curated playlist. Check that out here.

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Publicity: Emily Smart, Six Shooter Records

Management:  Shauna de Cartier, Helen Britton - Six Shooter

Booking: Julien Paquin