Animals in the Dark

Midwestern singer/songwriter William Elliot Whitmore's sound draws on folk, blues, and soul, and on his fourth album, ANIMALS IN THE DARK, he retains the raw, from-the-gut sound of his previous records, despite moving to a bigger label. Whitmore's big, rough voice bears echoes of everyone from Son House to Ted Hawkins, and he consistently sounds decades older than he is, but the spare, acoustic-based arrangements give that outsized voice plenty of room to move. The lyrics plumb the depths of Americana mythology for their imagery, but for all his old-world influences, Whitmore is undeniably a man of his era, and he processes that mythology through a personal filter informed by an intimate-but-contemporary context.