While I try to keep things current, I could not let this one's tenth anniversary (August 20) pass without acknowledgment, especially since every release they have put out after has been featured here. If Album Notes had been around in 2013...it still wouldn't have shown up since I only discovered Typhoon through their glorious 2018 epic Offerings. Now it's White Lighter time. 

Better written than its predecessor, more joyous than the successor, LP number three from Kyle Morton and his Oregon cohort, and the second one widely available as their 2005 debut seems to have vanished in all forms from the earth, is the high point of their career thus far. And I'm saying this as someone who declared Offerings my favorite album of 2018. Offerings' marked a notable shift for the band and its best moments cut deeper, but on White Lighter there's an overall celebratory nature to much of the music that belies the uncertainty found in the lyrics of a young person grappling over one's place within their family, their world, and overall existence. Yet, Morton's choices of words stand largely as a breath of fresh air recognizing life's uncertainty while seemingly processing it in real time, bringing forth questions and concepts most experience over a personal evolution, length of time varying individually. The arrangements are so visceral, the lyrics emotional. White Lighter strikes a chord, alright. It does the quiet-loud dynamic as well as any album this century. It's big and bold without being pretentious. And bonus points for having a song titled after that of another record in their catalog. Always a plus. Not to mention they shout out no less than six breweries in the liner notes. Man I love this band.