For all of the talk you’ll hear in reviews about how Light Upon the Lake takes inspiration from the Byrds, the Beatles, and soul music (and every critic ever is saying it), it still feels wonderfully refreshing. I think it’s because guitar rock — and guitar pop even more so — feels like a dying culture.

Take the opening verse of Dave’s Song. There are a couple things immediately at work here. Most notably, I think, are the arpeggios picked throughout. Stolen straight from country music, who stole it from guitar pop (who stole it from jazz, for what it’s worth), this style is uncommon in most rock these days. It’s a level of complexity above what we’re used to. It sounds good though.

The second notable thing is singer Julian Ehrlich’s voice, which will be immediately familiar to Unknown Mortal Orchestra fans. Frankly, he’s perfectly suited for this material. His sad-sounding, dreamy falsetto works better for this material than it does on the recent work from Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

Almost every song follows this strategy: Light Upon the Lake, No Matter Where We Go, The Falls, and so on. Many of these songs are clearly inspired by the band’s favourite old-school 60’s guitar pop. A lot of bands have done this, but few do it as well as Whitney.

There are, of course, a lot of soul influences as well. This is clear from the band’s brass section. It’s most obvious in the album’s more upbeat tracks. But when it all comes together perfectly, it congeals into these brilliant moments that stick with you.

For my money, Polly is the clear standout track here: the guitar pop and the soul-inspired brass come together perfectly, and Erhlich sings “I know in the past you left me with no heart; How cheap were the nights you used to keep me warm?”. In that moment, you know you’ve heard something special. And who it sounds like is unimportant, because it moves past it.

What makes Whitney’s debut so great is, despite knowing as well as we do who and what they sound like, they move past that and make us feel something.

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The album was put together by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National for charity. Each sale of the record goes towards funding HIV and AIDs awareness and research. It’s a good cause, but as far as I’m concerned, any reason is a good reason to re-visit the Dead’s catalogue.

Some of the tracks deviate from the originals in significant ways. Vijay Iver’s version of King Solomon’s Marbles, for example, renders the song completely on piano instead of the band’s traditional guitar work. The result feels like a hybrid of old-time jazz with some of Rey’s theme from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was surprising and wonderful.

Other tracks stick closer to the script. And We Bid You Goodnight feels as powerful as ever (save its final live performance, which is thankfully available on Youtube). It’s a tremendous track, and I’m glad that Sam Amidon knew he had a good thing.

Other tracks surprise, in both good and bad ways: Mumford & Sons strip Friend of the Devil of its usual controversy and make it mass-audience friendly (which is a typical Mumford move). Each track from The National feels like a taste of heaven. The War on Drugs turn in a performance on Touch of Grey that could be described as “expected,” but I’d rather call it “effective.”

The whole album reads like a “who’s who” of indie, and some of the genre’s less well-known artists put out the best tracks. In particular, I love Courtney Barnett’s take on New Speedway Boogie and Perfume Genius & Sharon Van Etten & Friends’ work on To Lay Me Down.

Not all of the album is perfect: there’s five and a half hours of music here, so your mileage may vary. A few tracks had me hovering over the skip button. But at least an hour of the album is impeccable, and at least three hours of it is very good. Those sound like bad batting odds, but the variety of genre work here is so huge that it would be impossible to satisfy with any other track.

That wide variety could be a turn off for some Grateful Dead fans, though. After all, the band was always a guitar group. Hearing other takes on these tracks can sometimes feel like sacrilege. Other times, the self-seriousness of the record drags it down like a weight.

But yet the album feels more powerful than not. How many rock artists could stand up to this level of scrutiny and re-interpretation? The only other artist I think you could pull this off with is Bob Dylan. Day of the Dead is this rare treat that’s a reminder of the past, like a thank-you letter for it. It’s also a look towards the future.

All that being said, I think Day of the Dead’s power lies entirely in the Dead’s work. Hearing these artists re-interpret these tracks and re-contextualize them for their own purposes is fascinating, and often rewarding, but its emotional power lies entirely in the reminder that music can bring us together so clearly. It’s a celebration of The Grateful Dead, but it feels like a celebration of the power of rock music. And it’s a complete and utter joy.

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II is a distinctly lo-fi record, performed almost in entirety by frontman Ruban Nielson (with the exception of the drums and a few horns). For this reason, the album sounds very tight musically — Ruban is clearly an expert musician — but it also sounds distinctly lo-fi, almost as if its being played underwater.

That’s the intention, of course, on a record that seems obsessed with vintage-style songwriting and musicality, but it might also be for thematic reasons. On one of the record’s most poignant moments, Nielson sings “I wish that I could swim and sleep like a shark does; I’d fall to the bottom and I’d hide till the end of time in that sweet cool darkness.” That Simon & Garfunkel-style melancholy is perfectly suited to the production style of the record.

The production is worth talking about: It demonstrates that Neilson has, compared to his peers, a superior understanding of what made those old records great. Today’s recordings reveal every note with crystal clarity, but these older records age so well because their production inefficiencies hide some of their details and preserve a sense of mystery (Led Zeppelin IV being a classic example).

While Unknown Mortal Orchestra is often reminiscent of the afore-mentioned Led Zeppelin and Simon & Garfunkel, they’ll also remind you of The Beatles’ approach to psychedelic pop (From The Sun) or Jimi Hendrix’s trademark fuzz sensibilities (One At A Time). This amalgamation of style makes Unknown Mortal Orchestra feel uniquely original, in an odd way: So Good At Being In Trouble is at once comfortably recognizable and uniquely Unknown Mortal Orchestra, with Nielson’s falsetto during the chorus giving the song a sense of urgency.

The same sense of urgency is often missing throughout the latter half of the record, which feels frustratingly more indulgent (although certainly in line with the styles the band is emulating). When the band finds their groove again on Faded in the Morning, it’s a much-needed and appreciated kick in the pants. But the wandering in the album’s mid-section demonstrates the band’s mastery of this lo-fi psychedelic style: unhurried and willing to experiment, the band refuses to settle on a single style. It’s an approach almost entirely ditched on last year’s Multi-Love, perhaps because the band felt they took the sound to its natural conclusion on II.

Regardless of why the band drifted away from this approach to songwriting, II feels like the sort of record that will later be recorded as a forgotten gem. Authentic and unique, despite its blatant influences and obvious stylistic emulations, II might go down in history as Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s best record.

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