![]() ![]() Think of Elevator-era Hot Hot Heat, the Thrills, Tokyo Police Club, or Phantom Planet, bands who pumped out enjoyable singles to sizable fanbases without ever worrying what their success indicated about the future of rock. Whether sanding off the grit of The World’s Best American Band was Joyce or White Reaper or Elektra’s idea, it nonetheless makes You Deserve Love less worthy of Camaro-revving fantasies, even if these total non-gearheads lean into them on “1F.” Watch the videos for “ Real Long Time” or “ 1F” and White Reaper are no longer a throwback to Thin Lizzy or Cheap Trick, but to another fertile era for pop-leaning guitar music: The one that bridged the gap between the New Rock Revolution and The O.C., when dudes in denim jackets with snappy songs about booze and girls were getting snapped up by majors by the dozens. “I’ve brought too many drinks with me and a 10-ton bucket of gasoline,” he jokes on the bubbly dub verse of “Saturday.” He’s drunk on nearly every song, either out of spite or feelings of inadequacy or just a desire to escape.īut the guys Esposito sings about would be better served by some audible evidence that they’re going against the grain. More importantly, Tony Esposito continues to successfully walk the tightrope between dirtbag and douchebag, a guy who could easily be cast as a Linklater good ol’ boy with his own band soundtracking the latest well-meaning debauch. While You Deserve Love is certainly slicker and more reliant on synths, it’s to the same degree that The World’s Best American Band was slicker and more synth-y than White Reaper Does It Again. White Reaper’s desire to really get on that echelon rather than merely evoke its essence results in the one noticeable Elektra-funded upgrade: You Deserve Love is produced by Jay Joyce, a guy who’s worked with Eric Church, Thomas Rhett, and Little Big Town, but also Cage the Elephant and FIDLAR-straightforward guitar acts whose enduring popularity and total lack of critical favor confound assumptions about rock bands in the streaming era. Their harmonized guitars, spring-loaded rhythms, and snotty hooks are all referential of Van Halen and Cheap Trick, some of the most popular musicians going in the ’70s and ’80s. White Reaper justify their anachronistic existence the same way they did on The World’s Best American Band: By proving that “rockism vs. But there’s also none of the indulgences one could reasonably expect from a band that prophesied their own pill-popping, hotel-demolishing rock stardom two years ago-no string sections, no acoustic ballads. Singles “Real Long Time” and “Might Be Right” are prime reasons the band considered Music For People Who Like Us as an album title. ![]() Rest assured, there are no quasi-trap beats or forced duets or empowerment anthems like those that typify the radio-friendly unit shifters and mono-genre pop acts now flanking White Reaper on the Elektra website. You should at least know that all the blame is on our shoulders,” keyboardist/hypeman Ryan Hater said earlier this year, perhaps assuming heated discussions about selling out to accompany his band’s throwback aesthetic. ![]() Keep scrolling to find the official “Real Long Time” single art and the band’s tour poster.“If you hate the new record, then you hate us. Watch the video for “Real Long Time” below, then see the band perform in 2015 via footage dug up from the Paste archives further down. You can revisit lead single “Might Be Right” here, where you’ll also find the band’s forthcoming tour dates. We still don’t have a date or title on the forthcoming album, which will be White Reaper’s first on Elektra. It’s given some grainy film-reel editing effects, sending the track further into its classic rock territory. “Real Long Time” is attached to a Lance Bangs-directed video that shows the Kentucky boys performing the track in a wood-paneled brick house. ![]() Tony Esposito’s lyrics ponder the passage of time and personal progress-“How come what you want and what you get / always seem to be two different things”-but the energetic instrumentation gives “Real Long Time” positive energy that prevents the track from being overly somber. That’s not a knock-the track is immediately catchy, with every member of the five-piece given a chance to soar above the rest in the groove-locked cut. With whammied electric guitars, arena-ready vocals and an organ-led bridge, “Real Long Time” sounds so familiar, you’ll be singing along by the end of your first listen. White Reaper are prepping the release of their fourth album by sharing a new ‘80s rock ’n‘ roll revivalist cut, “Real Long Time.” ![]()
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