ALBUM REVIEW: William Elliott Whitmore Dispenses Hard Wisdom on ‘Silently, The Mind Breaks’
Jon Young
Posted On January 25, 2024
Troubled souls who need an ally on the rocky road of life may find a kindred spirit in Iowa’s William Elliott Whitmore. Continuing to dispense hard wisdom more than two decades after his debut, this plainspoken country-folk troubadour ponders existential angst and other primal issues on the compelling Silently, The Mind Breaks. The good news: We’re all in this together. The bad news: We’re all going to die.
William Elliott Whitmore (photo by Chris Casella)
A no-frills affair, this unsettling yet invigorating album is essentially a one-man show, mixing Whitmore’s banjo, acoustic guitar, and kick drum with gritty, determined vocals. Occasional support musicians fail to dispel the sense of a solitary truth-teller on a mission, compelled to deliver a dark message.
Whitmore opens the album by somberly singing, “Be still my heart, be still my mind / I just need a moment of peace.” However, relief proves elusive. After considering the implications of the graveyard on “Be Still,” he confronts the inevitability of death on “Has to Be That Way,” gently admitting, “There’s nothing I can do about it.” But Whitmore rebounds, tenderly proclaiming, “I don’t believe in much / But I do believe in you.” If salvation exists, he’ll find it by connecting with others.
This fierce tug of war between bitter disbelief (“I knocked knocked on heaven’s door / No one was home”) and rejuvenating human contact (“When you first came along … couldn’t believe my luck”) runs throughout Silently, The Mind Breaks. The lively “Adaptation and Survival” declares, “These existential apparitions, they can’t find us anymore,” while “Dance with Me” insists, “There just may be something worthwhile after all / Past the point of no return,” even as the gloomy melody suggests otherwise.
Whenever the psychic burden of Silently, The Mind Breaks seems overwhelming, Whitmore adds a rousing shot of gallows humor, unleashing the kind of mordant wit Randy Newman would admire. Recalling early ’60s protest songs, “Bunker Built for Two” sets apocalyptic visions to a jaunty beat, cheerfully proclaiming, “We’ll be safe and sound in our paradise underground.” The rollicking “Break Even” could be a comic lament from the early days of country music, recounting mundane trials from a leaky roof to coyotes in the henhouse to a losing poker hand.
The closing track, “A Golden Door to an Empty Place,” mournfully regards “forgotten souls forever gone,” let down by religious dogma. This bleak parting dispatch aside, Whitmore’s fiery heart infuses Silently, The Mind Breaks with the kind of defiant energy that makes surviving this mad world a tad easier.
William Elliott Whitmore’s Silently, The Mind Breaks is out Jan. 26 on Whitmore Records.
