Pitchfork

Itinerant 23-year-old laptop recording artist Joe Williams, aka White Williams, plays pop music with a technological fascination that betrays his roots in the noise scene. He'll soon be touring with electronic pop loonies Girl Talk and Dan Deacon, and this song from his forthcoming debut album Smoke falls somewhere between Deacon spazz and the digital pop-rock of a computer-fixated group Williams probably wouldn't namedrop, Grandaddy. Take those chugging guitar chords, which Williams runs through all manner of filters and effects.

Williams' vocals, also warped with delay and other software-assisted tweaks, stick to a sturdy pop melody. His lyrics are more oblique, describing prisoner's beds, perfect colors, and other less easily decipherable images. Percussion patters and algorithmic synths squiggle willy-nilly, as they might in one of Deacon's tracks. If it all sounds a bit like an elegant jukebox selection heard over a pinball machine, then maybe Williams is a wizard.