On April 8, 2025, William Carlos Whitten returned with a collection of haunting revelations and poetic sonic canvases through his latest full-length album Telepaths, a 12-track odyssey that threads existential thought with raw, analog heartache. But if there’s one track that glows like an ember in the dark, it’s Heaven Is a Face—a song so fragile, so direct, and yet so heavy with implication, it lingers like a dream you’re not quite ready to wake from.
Heaven Is a Face doesn’t ask for your attention—it earns it. With a simplicity that cuts deeper than any overproduced anthem ever could, the song walks a tightrope between confession and salvation. Whitten sings like someone with nothing left to lose and everything left to say, channeling the ghost of Leonard Cohen with the grunge-streaked poetry of Jeff Buckley. The title alone suggests something deeply personal and spiritual, but it never becomes preachy or opaque. Instead, it turns human faces—specific and imagined—into portals of divinity, as if love itself might be the closest thing to the afterlife we’ll ever get.
The instrumentation on Heaven Is a Face is understated but emotionally potent. Sparse guitar strums, ambient textures, and a vocal line so intimate it feels whispered just for you, all merge to create a sacred sonic space. There’s a weight to the silence between the notes, and Whitten plays it like a seasoned composer of tension and tenderness. It’s not just a track; it’s a prayer folded into melody, a love letter mailed across dimensions.
But Whitten doesn’t stop there. Across Telepaths, he builds an atmospheric universe where emotion drives every song and nothing is purely ornamental. The album opens with I’m Gone Don’t Look for Me I’ll Never Be Back, a poetic mic drop of a beginning that feels both nihilistic and strangely liberating. There’s an ex-lover’s kiss blown into the void here, and Whitten doesn’t flinch. It’s not an invitation—it’s a boundary, and it’s beautifully drawn.
Hear My Prayer and Beggars and Whores follow, both drenched in a sort of gothic Americana, with reverb-soaked guitars and lyricism that blurs the line between sacred and profane. These aren’t just songs—they’re exorcisms. Whitten turns personal demons into chorus lines, heartbreak into hymns. Proletarians of Love might be the most subversive ballad on the album, pairing working-class romanticism with the cold stare of reality, while Elegie pour la Musique Rock feels like a eulogy for a genre, delivered by someone who still believes in its power even as he mourns its ghost.
Then there’s Loudmouth, which acts as the album’s defiant scream—biting, electric, and proud in its refusal to whisper. But right after that, Whitten takes us on a philosophical loop with The Singer is the Origin of the Song. The Song is the Origin of the Singer, an ouroboros of a track that questions the very nature of art, identity, and purpose. Only an artist as fearless as Whitten could make metaphysics feel this gut-wrenching.
By the time How Long? and the title track Telepath roll in, the album begins to stretch its limbs into dream-pop territories, echoing shoegaze aesthetics without losing its lo-fi soul. Whitten sings like someone caught in a feedback loop between thought and transmission. These songs don’t just say something—they feel like they’re reading your mind, humming back your own unspoken questions.
And yet, even in this ethereal landscape, Heaven Is a Face remains the gravity well. Every orbiting song seems to circle back to it in tone or spirit. There’s something about the emotional stillness of that track that anchors the whole album. It’s the calm inside the storm, the vulnerable truth behind the poetic armor.
Whitten closes things out with Chauffeur at the Speed of Light, Street Love, and a surprising take on High Heel Sneakers, each giving a different shade to his palette—spacey, streetwise, and unexpectedly playful. Even when he’s messing with tempo or toying with genre, there’s always that same thread: a deep reverence for storytelling and a fearless willingness to feel.
With Telepaths, William Carlos Whitten proves once again that he’s not just a singer-songwriter—he’s a soul translator, bending melody and verse to speak truths we’re too afraid to say out loud. But Heaven Is a Face? That one is special. That’s the track you play when the world gets too loud, too fast, too unreal. It’s a mirror and a moment, a whisper from the cosmos reminding you that maybe—just maybe—divinity doesn’t live above us, but in the eyes of someone we love.
This isn’t just music. This is alchemy. And Whitten, as always, is the quietly grinning magician behind the curtain, reminding us that heaven was never that far away after all.
