Since gracing the Richmond music scene in 2011, electronic/rock band White Laces have set the bar for all current and future indie rock bands in this town incredibly high with their electric, amplified live performances, and garnered success with their frequent touring, delivering several solid albums, and producing an unmistakable brand of noisy, fuzzy shoegaze that we’ve come to know and love.
Since gracing the Richmond music scene in 2011, electronic/rock band White Laces have set the bar for all current and future indie rock bands in this town incredibly high with their electric, amplified live performances, and garnered success with their frequent touring, delivering several solid albums, and producing an unmistakable brand of noisy, fuzzy shoegaze that we’ve come to know and love.
Refusing to sit back and revel in their success, the now five-piece outfit is delivering a double dose of tunes, one many loyal fans will remember as well as a new record with a slightly different sound for the newcomers and the diehard fans.
In a few weeks, White Laces will reissue their first EP from 2011, Sick of Summer, on cassette followed by the release of their third record, No Floor all via Egghunt Records. You’re welcome Richmond.
“It’s five songs we did in Boston plus three songs that we did kind of in the months after that, we came back in town and recorded some songs that ended up on a split 10 inch with the Snowy Owls,” said Landis Wine, vocalist/guitarist for White Laces, referring to the reissued EP. “The other song on there was on the B side of the 7 inch we did with a band from Philadelphia called Arches.”
Much of that part of the band’s catalog was on vinyl only so Wine said it only made sense to put out a reissue.
“We’re essentially consolidating the whole catalog under Egghunt so it’s all online,” he said.
That loud, shoegaze fuzzy sound was infectious and was what Richmond came to know White Laces for from their early EPs and singles. They hit their stride musically with the impeccable full-length album Moves (Speakrtree Records, 2012) that cranked the volume down, but kept the energy up and atmospheric, moody tendencies in place.
Their last record, 2014’s Trance, was released under Egghunt and for their newest album, Wine said they decided to team up again with the RVA indie label which has quickly become a household name boasting an eclectic roster including Feral Conservatives, Clair Morgan, Avers, Manatree, and formerly Lucy Dacus.
“Adam from Egghunt came out of the gate offering to do it,” he said.
The band began work on No Floor near the end of 2014.
“We basically had a bunch of demos at that point and we were trying to decide what to do with them,” Wine said.
After sitting on that material for a while, the band initially decided to put it out as a tour EP, but Wine thought it could use some tweaking so in June, the band got some studio time in at Spacebomb Records to lay down their vocals and had Jeff Ziegler (of their Trance album, The War on Drugs, Kurt Vile) do the mixing in Philadelphia.
White Laces finished up the eight-track record in February and those two years of work really shows on this album, in fact, it just might their best to date.
“This is the longest record we’ve ever worked on,” he added. “The first two were done in about a week and a half. This was insanely different and very sporadic.”
From listening to it, it’s much more electric and textured than their previous material. It’s much more refined, yet still keeping the same feel we know and love from them. White Laces really found their sound on this one.
“When I talked to Jeff about doing the mixing for it, I wanted to feel like it’s in a boombox can it just be kind of a raddy cassette that has a bunch of grooves and stuff on it,” Wine said. “A lot of its kind of overblown and a little bit distorted and we really distressed a lot of the stuff…”
Tori Hovater, who rounded out the band on keys and vocals about a year and a half ago, described the album as a little less “rock bandy” than their previous recordings.
“It’s got a lot more layers. There’s very small melodic elements that are working together,” she said. “I think that’s part of the challenge recreating that live can be a little tough but it’s been really interesting to put that stuff into a live setting… More electronic. “
Wine did most of the writing and programming for the songs alongside drummer Jimmy Held.
“We’d go over to each other’s places and listen to stuff and tweak thing and record little parts here and there, but it was much more of a process of collaboration where we were making edits,” Wine said.
The musician added they ran it through a lot of old analog gear such as old processors from the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
“Ever since we started the band, we’ve done a certain amount of electronic processing,” he said, before describing each record’s feel.
“Trance was… we were a rock band trying to incorporate electronic elements and this time it was like all electronic trying to meet in the middle and find a happy medium there,” he said. “Kind of like the exact opposite approach to the previous record.”
White Laces was kind enough to allow RVA Mag to premiere the track “Dots” off of No Floor, an ambient dream-like song which is very hypnotic, bordering on psychedelic, coupled with smooth vocals over atmospheric sounds which you can check out below.
The 2011 remastered EP Sick of Summer will come out Aug. 26 and the new album No Floor will be released Sept. 30.
White Laces will embark on a Northeast tour in October, but you catch them in RVA Sept. 2 at Gallery5 for First Fridays.
The band will also release a new video for their song “Cheese” off of No Floor in September so keep an eye on RVA Mag for that as well!
