Whale Fall - Five (2024) Hi-Res

Despite appearing at 2023’s Post. festival in Indiana and 2024’s post-rock CAN festival in Zhoushan, China alongside fellow post-rock luminaries such as We Lost the Sea, the members of Whale Fall sit uneasily with the “post-rock” label, preferring to describe their music simply as “instrumental”. And sure — sometimes their music is more ambient, or jazzy, or lounge-y, or a little bit prog. But it has generally conformed to the basic conceit of post-rock: take a lineup of instruments and musicians that could fit into a rock band, and have them play something that, well, isn’t rock.

On their fifth studio album, Five, Whale Fall throw the last scrap of that definition out the window. Without eschewing any of the styles they’ve played before, some of the new album is straight-up rock’n’roll. And it cooks.

Much of the shift feels due to drummer Aaron Farinelli’s inarguable grooves, which on Five often appear to be driving the bus — at least, as much as any of these musicians ever does. Phenomenally talented, never really upstaging each other, they have an enviable sense of balance and graceful handoff that has persisted far longer than most bands can go without a fistfight.

Whale Fall released their eponymous first LP in 2011, when they were all living in or near Los Angeles. They’ve since scattered, but they came together in late 2022 near Joshua Tree National Park in California to record most of Five at Gatos Trail in Yucca Valley. It’s been almost two years since those recording sessions; more than four since their previous release, It Will Become Itself. But Five is worth the wait.

It sneaks up on you. The opener, ‘El Jinete’ (“the horseman”), might have been at home on 2014’s The Madrean, with Dave Pomeranz’s brisk guitar and J. Matt Greenberg’s mariachi-tinged trumpet lines. ‘Chronophobia’ opens with footstep drums and a slow-motion sense of passing time. Whale Fall are never afraid to get the jump on their audience, and after devolving to softly paced piano noodling that soothes the brain into complacence, they pound in halfway through the song with head-banging guitars, bass and drums throbbing in concert.

‘Tokomak’, too, slides in with simple piano and evolves into a proggy rock feel, fast drums urging on the gentler piano and guitar lines, and sounding like nothing so much as… Elton John’s ‘Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding’? By the time we get to ‘Football Movie: The Movie’ (sidebar: no idea what’s up with the redundant title there), we’re getting full-throated rock’n’roll — evoking early U2 if anyone.

Whale Fall’s exquisite sense of timing and their dedication to build and shape are undimmed on Five. Erik Tokle’s bass sidles up on ‘Fjord Lightning’, and is met by a slow, metal-tinged guitar riff; a bit over a minute in, Whale Fall bring the grunge, which continues to build for a minute, then drops down to a quiet after-the-storm segment. Farinelli slowly brings in a marching beat. And then everyone is on deck, Greenberg’s trumpet soaring overhead. It’s a whole movie in a matter of minutes.

There’s more to discover here: Pomeranz, Tokle and Ali Vazin’s variously screaming, subtle, and processed guitars. Frequent guests Artyom Manukyan’s soulful strings and Daniel Rotem’s capable sax. Reggae melodica on the back half of ‘Apocalypse Wow!’ The haunting, atmospheric ‘Apophenia’, possibly the most stunning piece on the album, weighing in at a respectable eight minutes that still manages to feel too short. By the end of the album, Whale Fall have drawn lines of connection to their previous work, but have also cast lines forward in a half-dozen new directions. It’s all recognisably Whale Fall. But these five musicians on their fifth album leave us with an enormous, beautiful cliffhanger — there’s simply no divining where they are going to go next. Based on Five, though, we know that wherever it is, it’s going to be an amazing ride.