„The Chicago indie rock band soothes heartbreak with the most anonymous, uninspiring music you can possibly imagine.

A brief and incomplete list of places where you can expect to hear Small Talk by Whitney: Hotel lobbies. Hotel elevators. Your local CVS in 10 years. A restaurant that sells three tacos for $25 and serves them on a stainless steel zigzag. A Spotify mix titled “Chill Vibes Indie Road Trip” between a song by an AI-generated classic rock band and “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Antidepressant commercials. (…) Maybe that’s unfair — Whitney’s personality-free soft rock isn’t just a soundtrack for asking your doctor if this medication is right for you; it could just as easily sell orange juice or laundry detergent. Who says Whitney lack range? (…)

In its best moments, Small Talk is pleasant background noise. “In the Saddle” and “Evangeline” are pretty enough. The latter barely taps the potential of guest vocalist Madison Cunningham, leveling the playing field of the duet and leaving Cunningham’s normally dynamic voice sounding shallow and unmemorable. (…) Each track sways into the next at a similar tempo and with similar intensity, which is to say none. (…) Small Talk is as unobjectionable as music can be, but to call it “inoffensive” would be spiritually false: I will be offended when I’m in a public place and one of these songs is foisted on me at the mercy of some vibes-forward algorithm—that is, if I can recognize what’s playing.“

(Review von Grace Robins-Somerville bei Pitchfork)