All My Skies Are Blue

Album Review

All My Skies are Blue takes the minimal, low-key solo-guitar and vocals genre into some pretty extreme territory — most of the album's tracks have a melancholy laziness and incredible simplicity to them that are pretty much unique to White. Others, however, veer onto different ground, foregrounding distorted guitar over distant vocal yelping. The more melodic end of White's work doesn't quite live up to the work of the genre's best practicioners (Cat Power and, on the sunnier side, Julie Doiron) — the more frantic tracks "S**t," despite being rather interesting, can be almost bothersome in that they ruin the languid purity of the tracks surrounding them. This leaves All My Skies are Blue in pretty shaky territory — it's occasionally great, but occasionally rather dull.