Silver Skies is the debut solo full-length album of Toronto singer-songwriter/guitarist Will Whitwham. Between Wilderness of Manitoba gigs last winter, frontman Whitwham challenged himself to write and record a song a day. The result of that body of work as Lake Forest is eleven sparse and melancholy folk songs inhabited by Whitwham’s dreamy vocals, guitar and rare glimpses of piano. While the sound and mood are consistent across the collection of songs, what binds and elevates the work are the locations and dreamscapes that inspired the album: the Illinois of Dave Egger’s book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (it is in Lake Forest, IL that Egger’s parents die of cancer within one year of each other, leaving the young Eggers to raise his little brother); a road near Whitwham’s family cottage (the only place that recurs in his dreams), and a rural expanse of an evergreen forest set in winter snow (the photograph taken by a friend that graces the album’s cover). – Written by SMarx
SIMILAR | The Deep Dark Woods, Waxahatchee, The Wilderness of Manitoba, The Wooden Sky