#deary

Truthfully, other than having a balance between catchy melodies and rapturous textural bliss, as Slowdive mastered on Souvlaki, the two bands don’t sound terribly close together within their shared genre boundaries. Right from the start, there’s a clarity and focus in the songs here that belies their sometimes diaphanous settings. Night-bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day’s trim 33 minute runtime frequently feels misleading given how expansive and far out it can feel when playing, although even then there’s an element keeping things anchored enough that the band never lets the songs fully drift away. Everyone contributes; whether it’s drummer Jagun Meseorisa’s steady pulse on “Chosen Light,” Vanessa Govinden’s bass threading through the indelible chorus of “The Prophet & I,” or the way Quartey-Papafio and Michael Adelaja’s guitars twinkle then churn throughout “Cheer.”

On Whitelands’ Bandcamp page, you can find a 2018 version of “Cheer.” It has its own scrappy charms (and it’s a good enough song you understand why they’d give it another crack), but the newer version doesn’t seem polished down into something more digestible; instead it's both strengthened and more comfortable in its own skin. Night-bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day has the kind of easy, confident sense of the band’s sonic identity that many great debuts manage; even when they bring in Dottie from deary to sing on “Tell Me About It,” the result just sounds distinctly Whitelands. By the time the album closes with the billowing “Now Here’s the Weather,” it’s clear that they’ve vaulted right past the likes of a 'promising debut' and have just made a record that’s already worth cherishing.