Whitehorse Releases All I Want Is All of It

New Album a Proverbial, Sonic and Emotional Return 

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“The songs offer tales of circumstances in which love and death can be found as preconditions of existence. You cannot have one without the other. Whitehorse want it all.” - PopMatters 

Honestly, how dare we. The audacity of wanting what we want, and trying to have it. With new album All I Want Is All of It, out today, Whitehorse asks: “How much is too much?”

So much of Whitehorse’s wildly eclectic catalogue invokes masterfully spun fiction and fantasy, but with All I Want Is All of It, out now, it’s time for the real stuff, intrusive thoughts and all. “I Want the Milk,” with a new video also released today, encapsulates the album’s title and premise. A dairy-themed twist on the aphoristic ‘have your cake and eat it too,’ the song takes it to its absurdist - yet highly tuneful - conclusion.

Over their last albums, Whitehorse has been on a journey through sound and style, a free-wheeling playlist shuffle from retro blues to high-gloss rock n’ roll, with a recent righteous turn to classic country and back again. Now, with new record All I Want Is All of It, Whitehorse find their way home, proverbially, sonically, and emotionally, with a collection of songs that return to the duo’s early folk rock romanticism, with a perspective only afforded by over two decades of musical and matrimonial partnership.  

On All I Want Is All of It, contradictory and difficult emotions bubble to the surface, embodied by the album’s first single, based on an internet tragedy in one act, the anglerfish-inspired “See the Light.” The passage of time is an inevitable contemplation throughout the new album. While not exactly optimistic for the future (“2155”), Whitehorse’s new songs reflect on twenty years of artistic life together (“Pure Poetry”), and gratitude that there is, after all of that, yet more to come (“Please Tell the Stars”). As with the all-in sentiment of “Bullet in the Chamber,” Whitehorse’s romanticism has never hedged its bets. 

‘Ragged by right,’ All I Want Is All of It shows its bones - farmhouse studio quirks and all - with trucks on gravel, birds and Great Lakes industrialism clanging in the distance. In this setting, Whitehorse found freedom in the process. Instinct versus overthink. One take versus overdubs (in the case of “Lighthouse,” the demo recording itself). Just playing over editing. 

Coming home is a complicated concept when home has been so many different places. From Winnipeg to Nashville, Vancouver to Hamilton to Toronto, Whitehorse’s catalogue traces many moves across the continent, with cities as main characters throughout their eight full-length studio albums. Around the block and back again, All I Want Is All of It contains many references to what’s now out the window (“Fire”) with a newfound appreciation for and comfort in familiarity.  

All I Want Is All of It is a testament to longevity, to weathering storms, to making it work and to the ties that bind. The album serves as a compelling portrait of lives lived in music, no more evident than in the album’s credits, which feature Big Jimmy Bowskill on bass and Little Jimi (Melissa and Luke’s son), on Wurlitzer and Hammond organ. Drums by John Obercian and Fred Eltringham and keys by Vincent Jones round out the album’s lived-in sound and feel. The theme of family continues with Whitehorse’s return to headline touring this spring with the All of It Tour, which includes daughter Chloë Doucet in the lineup. See tour dates below.   

“The stories are bullets, stars, steel towns, unholy matrimony, impure poetry and the milk of babes,” says Whitehorse. “Secrets culled from the unspoken code that emerges when two hearts create as much as ours have.”

Six Shooter Records releases All I Want Is All of It today. 

Buy/stream here. 

ALL OF IT TOUR DATES:

5/21 London, ON - Aeolian Hall*

5/22 Guelph, ON - Sonic Hall*

5/29 Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall*

5/30 Ottawa, ON - Babs Asper Theatre*

5/31 Montreal, QC - Petit Campus*

6/12 Winnipeg, MB - The Park Theatre*

6/14 Saskatoon, SK - Capitol Music Club*

6/16 Calgary, AB - Bella Concert Hall*

6/17 Sherwood Park, AB - Festival Place*

6/20 Vancouver, BC - FIFA Fan Festival

* w/ Chloë Doucet  

Tickets and details at whitehorsemusic.ca