Whitney band member Julien Ehrlich talks success on their latest record

The band Whitney is currently on what Julien Ehrlich describes as a “small market tour,” performing in cities like as Indianapolis and Louisville. The band will perform on Feb. 12 at The Westcott Theater. The Daily Orange spoke to Ehrlich from Whitney about the vulnerable lyrics on its latest record, “Forever Turned Around.”  

The Daily Orange: Whitney is touring in support of its new record, “Forever Turned Around.” I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about this new record. What makes this record so “honest” for the band? 

Julien Ehrlich: I mean, it’s like a slice of where Max [Kakacek] and I were at: trying to be as vulnerable and as honest as possible in our anxieties. We were in our feelings.  

D.O.: Where do you think those vulnerabilities show up on the record? 

J.E.: I mean, in the lyrical content. This is the type of record where the lyrics didn’t just pop out finished. We did a bunch of rewriting to make sure that the sentiments and everything that we are saying on the record would hold up. We can sing them every night and feel totally proud of them.  

D.O.: Compared to your work in the past, aside from lyrically, how would you say this record differs from the work you’ve done in the past? 

J.E.: I think we just played the songs better. Whenever I’ve gone back and listened to “Light Upon the Lake,” I just hear a record where it’s like we didn’t necessarily know how to perform a finished song. Like, the songs are good, but they sound kind of janky or like jangly. And with “Forever Turned Around,” I feel like we just like learned how to, like, nail the performances a little bit better because we had toured so hard on “Light Upon the Lake,” and we did just genuinely get better at our instruments. 

D.O.: So, you just think that, instrumentally, it was much better executed? 

J.E.: The arrangements are like a little more sophisticated as well, and the melodies, I think, are a little bit more like — I saw somebody on Twitter call them, like, “luxurious.” I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of nice!” You can tell that we don’t just settle on a melody that sounds OK. We’re trying to play a melody that can really move you.  

D.O.: Right. And usually when you guys write songs, does it start off instrumentally or lyrically, or does it all vary there as well? 

J.E.: It usually starts with like a chord progression. We’ve written a ton of catchy chord progressions, but it isn’t until, like, a melody and a phrase or something really sticks to it. Then, we work to finish it and make it a song.  

D.O.: Can you tell me a bit about how Whitney all came together?  

J.E.: The Smith Westerns broke up, and we didn’t necessarily try to start a band straight out the gate together. Obviously, Max and I were best friends sort of dealing with that breakup. We remained really, really close, but we were kind of working on our separate things. I was writing a record with Ziyad, and Max was working on some solo songs.  

After a while, it was just one random day. We just woke up one morning because we lived together, and Max had bought a tape machine and we wanted to learn how to use it. We just wrote a song because we had to record something onto it, and it just happened to be something that we really liked.  

From then on, we woke up the next morning and made another song. And both of those songs ended up on the record. And then we wrote “Golden Days” and we were like, “Oh, OK, so this can really be a thing.”  

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.