White Lung: Premonition review – sweet but samey swansong

Six years on from their impressive fourth album Paradise, Vancouver trio White Lung finally return from a long hiatus… only to reveal that it’s their final record. The lengthy gap between recordings – due first to frontwoman Mish Barber-Way becoming a mother and then the pandemic – hasn’t triggered any kind of radical rethink in their sound. For the most part this is punk at its most polished and tuneful, albeit frequently delivered at breakneck speed, with Hysteric, Winter and Bird particularly powerful.

Throughout there are echoes of Hole and the Distillers, although just as often their innate sense of melody nods to Best Coast. Taken in isolation, each song sounds bracingly exciting, yet across Premonition as a whole there is a creeping sense of sameyness. The tempo only drops once, on Under Glass, and it’s no coincidence that it’s a little underwhelming, which suggests the band at least play to their strengths. Best listened to as discrete tracks rather than as a whole, and never quite scaling the heights of Paradise or 2014’s Deep Fantasy, this album is a pleasing but flawed swansong.