Bio, written by Rob Moura:
“Why do you want to make music?” It’s an important question — perhaps the only important one a musician can ask — but The Whags answer it succinctly. They play for brotherhood.
Though they officially formed in 2017, the quintet’s roots go back to childhoods spent in the greater Seattle area, where keyboardist Jordan Tan once laid down bluegrass tunes with guitarist Chris Porter. After linking up with fellow guitarist Liam Tevlin, drummer Can Hancock, and bassist Marz Haque, the group set about fashioning a style of music at the vertices of their mutual interests: roots rock, tight musicianship, and the intimacy that comes from jamming for hours on end.
Since then, The Whags have built a dedicated following in thrall with their live presence — you’ll find them regularly holding court at the Nectar Lounge, laying down two identical sets in a row in honor of Groundhog’s Day, or playing at outdoor festivals where they stretch their songs into fifteen-minute odysseys as the grass changes color around them. Wherever they choose to travel, there’s a refreshing unseriousness to their gait, an unwillingness to profess that their music is anything more than it actually is — musician friends synced up in the moment and recorded to tape.
Whatever ambitions The Whags have as a band they reserve for their music, evident in their wide-eyed second LP All Along the Water There’s a Mountain Song. Tracked at Woodinville’s famed Bear Creek Studios, the album vividly encapsulates the wide net they cast over Americana, replete with southern-rock guitar licks, the dual vocals of bluegrass, and the same enchanting aura of classic jam bands. Like a walk in nature enhanced by magic mushrooms, All Along the Water’s details flicker into strange, vibrant shapes resembling memories of influences past. There’s a flash of Fleet Foxes in the compositional matryoshka of “Summer.” Porter’s and Tevin’s dueling guitars on “Pink” summon the Allman Brothers. The ghost of Exile-era Rolling Stones haunts the late-night camaraderie of “Little Stick” and Tan’s giddy piano on “High Resolution.” None of it is pastiche, or even knowing homage; it’s just light channeled through the band’s prism into something uniquely theirs.
Where their debut album, 2023’s Routine For Now, made a rollicking introduction to the Whags, its sequel unequivocally expands. Its grooves are deeper, its range is wider, and its focus is more sharply set on counterbalancing the grievousness of modern American society with the graciousness for the people within it. The chorus of All Along the Water’s opener “Bad Year” warily sets the stage. “Unlike years before,” sing Tevlin and Tan, addressing the mundane upheaval of the recent past before issuing a portent: "Sun no more.” Yet for every open wound — the escalating climate crisis (“Summer”) or the way escapism can fracture even the closest of relationships (“Same Ol’ Peal”) — there’s a panacea to soothe it. “Pink” glides on a warm breeze, Tan fashions an earnest serenade to every “Olga,” and “Conflux” celebrates the simple power of communal musicianship. If All Along the Water hides a grand statement, it’s that existential anxiety can always be quelled by good times in good company, be it friends, lovers, or simply each other.
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