The Whigs’ new album Enjoy the Company was officially released Tuesday; yet the band has been offering it up for sale on this year’s Fall tour stops (including a night in Oxford on Sept. 7). The album has had time to float around speakers for a while. The fourth album from these Athens, Ga., natives has revealed itself to be the band’s finest work thus far, a mature venture filled with risks and pure enjoyment, as the title suggests, for the rest of us.
The album opens with an eight minute call to arms as “Staying Alive” storms out of the gate. In straying further than ever from the band’s early-career stylings of guitar, bass and drums in short bursts, the cries of a horn section jubilantly reveal itself. A little past the three-minute mark the song suddenly slows, as only a quiet guitar riff and Parker Gispert’s vocals remain and the song slowly reconstructs itself. Clattering symbols return and the guitars begin screaming urgently, only to be reconciled by a slow descent and Gispert’s final whisper: “Staying alive, staying alive.”
The album continues to surprise; after rollicking verses, the chorus of “Tiny Treasures” contains the first strains of acoustic guitar on the album and begins to sound like an orphaned Wilco track. Pianos periodically tinkle on “Couple of Kids,” and electric guitars are found wholly absent on “Thank You” but replaced with gentle acoustic strums.
The album’s lyrics exist at a relational level, as on previous Whigs’ efforts, but these words are of a different tone: this album is a celebration both musically and lyrically. Of the small moments of domesticity (“Scream if you get bit by the snake in the yard” sings Gilbert, ready to aid, on “Thank You”) as well as that holy grail of rock and roll, as found on the transparently titled “Rock and Roll Forever” and the infectious tension of  “Waiting”.
“Enjoy the Company” exudes an infectious joy. A true statement of intent, the joys of the smallest things in life set to exuberant rock music with innovative, surprising touches. “Enjoy the company, take a look around you, smell the roses,” the Whigs seem to say, and as play is pressed, this is exactly what happens.