The White Ravens 2012

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Saddle Up the Whales. This collection of upbeat, keyboard-propelled songs finds the band in the familiar waters of their 2010 release, Gargoyles and Weather Vanes, which earned pianist-composer Will favorable comparisons to Ben Folds and Billy Joel. The White Ravens continue to craft sparkling, irresistible pop music that invites us on a vacation from the ordinary. Listening to their cool, buoyant songs, one imagines the pair spent their summers snorkeling by day, waterskiing by night.

As its title suggests, Saddle Up the Whales promises a fantastic and unpredictable ride to places strange and imagined. Take the title track: the lyrics pose an admittedly absurd scenario involving poisoned worms and homicidal robins that the singer must flee on whale-back. The song floats on one of Will's punchy piano riffs, pulled along by the rope of Amy's girlish vocals and the backing harmonies of the local pop group the Greatest Hits. The nerdy weirdness of the lively verses and chorus is interposed by two slower, darkly mirrored orchestral bridges that resonate with the haunting sounds of whale song and the soaring string accompaniment of violinist Sophie Zhang, Amy's U-M co-op roommate.