White Lung’s final record, Premonition, is their most mature and powerful record yet, and comes after six years of silence from the band.
It’s been over five years since White Lung released any new material. After their explosive breakout album in 2014, Deep Fantasy, and the critically-acclaimed follow-up, Paradise, the punk band took a long yet unintentional hiatus. Now, singer Mish Barber-Way, guitarist Kenneth William, and drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou are back with their latest release, Premonition.
Premonition is a chaotic, bold, and hook-driven whirlwind of driving drums, intricate guitar work, and no-holds-barred lyrics about motherhood, pregnancy, and growth. The themes are deeper. The interplay between guitarist Kenneth and drummer Anne-Marie is more complex. The sound more cohesive. During an unintentional five-year hiatus, White Lung managed to grow up without settling down, and the trio has emerged out of its transformative period with raw, feral energy.
When the members convened in their hometown of Vancouver in 2017 to begin work with longtime producer Jesse Gander on their fifth album, they had no idea what kind of changes were in store for them. Frontwoman Mish was in the studio preparing to record vocals when she realized she was pregnant with her first child. A pandemic followed, then another baby, then the series of massive societal meltdowns that we’ve all come to call “everything that’s been going on.” But it takes a superb sense of balance to live life on the edge, where even a slight misstep can send you hurtling into oblivion. Ever fast on their feet, the band adapted to the unexpected, kept it together, and wound up creating the most powerful album of their career.
On Premonition’s standout track and lead single, “Date Night,” Mish imagines God as a nihilistic bad boy drunkdriving her through a blazing Los Angeles on the way out of town, and between Kenneth’s transcendent riffs and Anne-Marie’s pummelling backbeat, it sounds like exactly what you want playing as you set fire to your old life and hit the highway.
“I felt like that part of my life was expiring, so I was projecting those angry and scared feelings out onto the city of L.A. because it’s safe and comfortable to live in your anger instead of being self-reflective,” Mish reveals.