Last Friday marked the release of Whitelands’ sophomore album Sunlight Echoes and I was lucky enough to catch lead vocalist and guitarist Etienne Quartey-Papafio before the band sets off on tour. They have two dates in Paris and The Hague, before returning to perform in the UK, where fans will be able to hear their unique blend of ‘vulnerable, deeply moving shoegaze gold’.

According to Quartey-Papafio, the past week has been busy spent practising and getting the equipment together for tour, all whilst bringing out Sunlight Echoes. He said it has been ‘so lovely’ to see people’s reactions. ‘Everyone has been really loving the album and saying such sweet things about it, which is always the best because you never know how a second album is going to be received by people’.

With how acclaimed the first album was, it was a bit scary to follow that up with something better

This pressure was not surprising when Whitelands’ Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day was so acclaimed, making it to NME’s top debut albums for the first half of 2024. Discussing the phenomenon of the ‘sophomore slump’, which often pushes artists to rush a second album to continue the hype from the first, Quartey-Papafio feels that at this stage of time in the music industry, ‘a second album is sometimes more of a necessity than something the band wants to do’. ‘With how acclaimed the first album was, it was a bit scary to follow that up with something better… It can’t just be the same, it’s got to be better. It’s a very high expectation that the industry will set on you, because people will look for that, but I think [Sunlight Echoes] seems to be better than the first one’. I think it is safe to say that Whitelands have certainly kept up that momentum.

Sunlight Echoes has been described as an album of two halves; it starts with an upbeat easiness from ‘Heat Of The Summer’, before moving into heavier subjects in the second half, such as mortality, loneliness, and the genocide in Gaza. The band didn’t intend such a distinction, ‘we just made the songs,’ and this was simply the way they flowed best. Quartey-Papafio added that the band enjoy constantly weaving in and out between genres, notably shoegaze and dreampop. ‘It’s just how it happened because it ends on one of our softer songs as well, ‘Golden Days’, which usually would have been in the first half’, but instead creates a more hopeful note to close Sunlight Echoes, perhaps an echo of the first half’s lightness.

…the band enjoy constantly weaving in and out between genres, notably shoegaze and dreampop

We then dived into talking about a few tracks in particular, with ‘Mirrors’ being Quartey-Papafio’s possible favourite off the new album. ‘We’ve actually not really played the rest of the album live so I think that that’s when things will change because there’s some very fun songs to sing like ‘Glance’’, however when it comes to getting to perform them live, he notes that many of the tracks become very complicated to pull off. ‘I think ‘Heat Of The Summer’ might be my favourite to perform live actually’.

‘Songbird (Forever)’ is a stand-out track for me, with the imagery in the lyrics holding such a beautiful richness. For Quartey-Papafio, it was ‘a really fun one’ to create despite being born out of pain. ‘I think I was going through quite a dark period of time over the past year and around my birthday, I went to Seven Sisters with my friends and I was just singing about it. It’s just a big metaphor for friendship and closeness and all that stuff and there’s lots of imagery of inhaling, exhaling. I really like movies so I try and make things as visual as possible when I’m writing my lyrics. It kind of has to flow like a scene, you have to see it happening’. The visuality of ‘Glance’ is perfectly translated into its music video, directed by the award-winning Cameron Perry and starring David Jonsson and Honor Swinton Byrne, who capture the tension within just a glance. Quartey-Papafio sings all of their praises, saying how both Jonsson and Swinton Byrne ‘loved the music so they could just click into character so well. It’s amazing what actors can do.’ He hopes that clips of their music videos could be projected in the background of future Whitelands gigs to incorporate a more visual aspect.

…I think shoegaze is only really shoegaze because of what it’s made up of: a lot of people doing indie pop, Britpop, a lot of indie sleaze around the time period

Quartey-Papafio is most looking forward to getting to interact with fans and hearing their thoughts on the new album when back on the road. ‘I think that’s just one of the best parts of just being a musician in general, how many people you meet. Also all the food, I have this place I really wanted to go back to in Scotland, I forget the name, but I had great fried rice there going on tour with Slowdive so it’d be great to get that again. Especially when we’re going to be going to America too, so it’ll be very interesting to see just how much culture changes going across the pond.’

On what music Quartey-Papafio listens to day-to-day, he said ‘lately I’ve been really into Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. They did a project together, Silk Sonic, I’ve been really into that. Lots of like R&B stuff, that’s what I’ve been listening to because I’ve been trying to become a better singer, so there’s a lot of R&B records influencing this album. Still a lot of shoegaze, a lot of Slowdive, a lot of My Bloody Valentine, that kind of stuff. But I think shoegaze is only really shoegaze because of what it’s made up of: a lot of people doing indie pop, Britpop, a lot of indie sleaze around the time period. Shoegaze by itself is made up of other things.’ We also touched on the album’s only feature which comes from shoegaze legend Emma Anderson. This was a really enjoyable collaboration for Quartey-Papafio, saying Anderson is ‘really a people’s person, she cares about other people’, as well as such a talented vocalist.

Some lovely new t-shirts, the chance to chat about the album, lots of heavy guitars, and beautiful singing

On balancing the setlist between new material from Sunlight Echoes and old favourites, Quartey-Papafio reveals they will be ‘playing kind of a half and half, some of the old ones, some of the new ones’. ‘After we toured with Slowdive we didn’t really ever get the chance to do our own headline tour so a lot of people won’t have really heard these songs live ever.’ ‘We’ve got songs like ‘Heat Of The Summer’, ‘I’m Not A God, An Effigy’, and we’ve also got ‘Here’s The Weather’ and ‘Tell Me About It’, so pretty much our best songs are more gig appropriate. Something like ‘Glance’ we do not play live at all, there’s so much shuffling beats and syncopation’. As well as this promising setlist, fans can look forward to ‘some lovely new t-shirts, the chance to chat about the album, lots of heavy guitars, and beautiful singing’.

Catch Whitelands performing live on 18 February at the Hare & Hounds. Tickets available here.

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