★★★★★
www.anti.com
BY LEE ZIMMERMAN
Call him a ferocious folkie, a belligerent bluesman or a precocious punker. Whatever you do, don't call him out. As evidenced by the rabid tones of Radium Death, his eighth album and perhaps his most demonstrative, Whitmore is both resolute and resilient. "I've been bad, I've been tried, I can't stand myself sometimes," he declares on the tattered narrative "Go On Home...
- blurtonline.com
2015-04-02
★★★★★
William Elliott Whitmore is well-known for his raw, poetic, rural folk albums. On all of them, his rough-hewn growl of a voice is skeletally accompanied by only his banjo or acoustic guitar. Whitmore's always played in punk clubs, and he's claimed bands from the Jesus Lizard and Bad Brains to the Minutemen as influences on his own music. It's been somewhat difficult to hear that influence until now. Radium Death still contains Whitmore's hard folk roots...
- www.allmusic.com
2015-04-06
★★★★★
The surface-level view of William Elliott Whitmore is that of a midwestern folkie, having grown up in Iowa on his family's farm. In fact, his authentic, earthy American roots are a defining quality in his music; his soulful vocals and simple plucks of banjo or acoustic guitar are all he's ever really needed to convey a direct, emotional message of darkness and loss...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2015-04-01
★★★★★
?????????? Radium Death is William Elliott Whitmore's eigth studio album and a departure of sorts for the Iowa based roots/folk musician. On his last offering 2011's Field Songs, Whitmore went as sparse as possible using sometimes just his distinct voice to get his rustic yearning tunes across. Now the man with the dirt laden (in a good way) vocals has expanded things, plugging in electric on tracks, being backed by a full band and putting more of his DIY past into the present...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2015-04-01
★★★★★
Does a musician need to be in anguish and turmoil to make truly great music that touches the soul? Does the discovery of contentedness that comes with age necessarily put out the fires of youth? It's a widely held belief that both of these things are true, but listening to William Elliott Whitmore's proves both of those statements wholly untrue. Brimming with the life and joy Whitmore hinted at on 2011's , moves faster and with more bounce than anything he's released thus far in his career...
- exclaim.ca
2015-03-28
★★★★★
Like the son of a preacher man born a century too late, William Elliott Whitmore ticks all the correct boxes for the archetypal folk-blues renegade songsmith. But rather than a preacher, his father was a horse farmer from Iowa on the banks of the banks of the Mississippi river...
- www.beat.com.au
2011-12-07
★★★★★
Whitmore made a big impact with his previous album, 2009's Animals in the Dark, which combined a great deal of contemporary anger with traditional instrumentation. The Iowa native has carried that over into Field Songs, although his outlook this time seems more optimistic. Opening with banjo tune "Bury Your Burdens in the Ground," Whitmore is ready to turn the page on recent events in America and start rebuilding...
- exclaim.ca
2011-10-17
★★★★★
The Blues are largely associated with clubs in larger cities like Kansas City or New Orleans, but they started out in the fields. William Elliot Whitmore gets that, and his latest album, Field Songs, comes from just that premise. From the opening, almost iconic, image of two old men laughing at they stack hay onto an early century hay wagon, the audience knows that they are in for an album set among Southern farms...
- www.roughstock.com
2011-08-15
★★★★★
William Whitmore sounds a lot older than he is. Then again, armed with just a banjo and a guitar, he may well be Woody or Pete reincarnated. His songs are tales of struggle, of honest labor and dishonest government. The music is simple, but never plain, stirring without being strident, and as forceful as good folk music can be.Folk music is just that -- music of folks. Hailing from Iowa, Whitmore grew up in farm country, and it's this bedrock America he chronicles...
- www.ink19.com
2011-08-15
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