Whitney’s "Golden Days" Is Named Best New Track

Two years ago, during the early mornings of Chicago’s harshest winter in recent memory, Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich, both formerly of Smith Westerns, knocked their heads together for impromptu writing sessions. Like the goddess Athena, Whitney was born, a phantom muse with seemingly very good taste. The duo developed this character as the persona for their new country-rock project, which channels a kind of slacker Americana. Luxuriating in influences from Townes Van Zandt and the Band to Pavement, Whitney have written a musical love letter to their heroes.

“Golden Days,” their pleasantly and thoughtfully vintage new single, is a lesson in timelessness. Its twangy rhythm gladly bows down to the classics, and it perfectly captures a mood and image that hangs over long drives down Highway 66 or the PCH. Whitney embrace the sad rapture of wandering, hitchhiking, and inescapable nostalgia. With their bold horns and simple lyrical declaratives—“I tell myself what we had is gone,” “It’s a shame I can’t get it together now,” “I’m aching/ I’m searching for those golden days”—Whitney crafts songs that you hope to find while cruising the radio dial into the unknown.

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