Whitney’s fourth album is a moment of rebirth for the Chicago duo. After making a hard pivot towards pop-influenced sounds on 2022’s Spark, Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek—who, at this point, are a million miles away sonically from the teenage-kicking garage rock of their previous band Smith Westerns—return to the pastoral folk rock they made their name on with Small Talk. The result is a gorgeous and warm affair, complete with lush instrumentation and feathery melodies that resemble a full realization of the sound they first gained notice with on their critically acclaimed debut Light Upon the Lake from 2016. Ehrlich and Kakacek’s distinctive vocals continue to complement each other perfectly, their self-produced arrangements taking on levels of complication that stretch far beyond the Simon & Garfunkel comparisons of their early work and more towards the velvety soft rock of the late 1970s, every horn stab and piano run possessing the effervescence of sipping champagne at dusk.