whiskery - “Marry into money”

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Whisker is the artist project of Los Angeles based singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Shane Patrick Cronin. Inspired by artists like Tame Impala, Djo, and Phoebe Bridgers, Whisker crafts a fresh strain of psychedelic rock, rooted in folk songwriting and laced with the raw spirit of classic rock and roll. Whisker’s upcoming debut album, “Can’t You Feel It?” captures these influences in their entirety.

As the son of REO Speedwagon frontman Kevin Cronin, Shane was surrounded by music from infancy, but music wasn’t always the plan. Shane and his twin brother Josh grew up as basketball standouts at Westlake High School until their older sister Holly convinced them to join the school choir. Shane quickly found himself becoming a soloist, discovering a voice—and a direction—that would eventually lead him to the USC Pop Music program, where he graduated as a vocal major.

While still in high school, Shane and Josh formed Sir, Please alongside close friends Marshall Via, Michael Leese, and David Kohn, beginning a musical partnership that would span years of writing, recording, and touring. As Shane continued developing as a writer, producer, and musician at USC, Sir, Please grew alongside him. Their song “Dance With Me” has amassed more than 11 million streams, and the band toured extensively from 2017 through 2024, including a run opening REO Speedwagon’s 2021 West Coast Tour. After years spent growing together as musicians, the group eventually began pursuing separate creative paths while remaining close friends.

For Shane, that next chapter became Whisker.

With two EPs already released, Whisker has given Shane a place to bring every side of his musicianship together—writing, producing, singing, and playing—while building a sound unmistakably his own. His arrangements can be dense and psychedelic without losing their intimacy, pairing a modern sonic palette with just enough old-school rock-and-roll sensibility underneath it. That spirit carries beyond the studio; Whisker is built to be a live band as much as a recording project, translating layered production into performances that feel immediate, human, and alive.

Over the past six months, Shane has been immersed in creating Whisker’s forthcoming debut album, “Can’t You Feel It?” Longtime REO Speedwagon manager Tom Consolo describes the record simply: “Shane’s album is exquisite.”

At its core, “Can’t You Feel It?” is a record about family, memory, and the relationships that shape us. Shane reflects, “These songs are conversations that would otherwise remain unspoken, between myself and former partners, family members, and past and future versions of myself.”

Take “Bus Stop,” for example, an intimate gem of a song that allows Shane’s lyricism to truly shine. The track is a conversation with his 5th grade-aged self, who dealt with anxiety and a feeling of separation from his touring father. “Growing up as the son of a touring musician, my dad was absent for 8 months out of the year. The financial security he provided came with a lack of closeness, which was difficult to deal with,” Shane explains. However, looking back at his childhood with the eyes of an adult, Shane recognizes the love that was always there and distills

it into a single moment: his father calming him during an anxiety attack at a bus stop. “While getting onto a bus with him, little 11 year old me had an anxiety attack because I was feeling nauseous, and it spiraled. My dad was there to comfort me and hug me, as he always was for my entire childhood. He was always there, even though I associated him with being on the road.” Shane captures the complicated dichotomy of this feeling with the beautifully simple and honest lyric: “You were always. You were never. You were permanent.”

This honesty and intimacy is also present on album opener, “Kin,” a reflection on Shane’s relationship with his twin brother. “The two of us have always been close. We never fight. We lived together in college. A true low maintenance family relationship,” says Shane. But when Shane decided to move to the city and Josh decided to stay back home, everything changed. “Josh preferred a slower, quieter life, while I wanted to be in the fast paced epicenter of Los Angeles, which caused us not to see each other as much.” Writing “Kin” was Shane’s way of processing this shifting dynamic with his brother, but it also ended up being a road back to each other. “At the time this song was written, I didn’t feel very close to my brother, and writing this song gave me the confidence to try to fix that,” Shane explains. With its gorgeously lush production and nostalgic energy, “Kin” captures the bittersweetness of growing up, growing apart, and growing back together.

Nostalgia and emotional honesty radiate throughout “Can’t You Feel It?”, but the album has some truly glorious upbeat moments as well. Lead single “Marry Into Money” is a high-octane, ‘80s-inspired fever dream of a track that grabs you from the very first second and takes you for a wild ride. “‘Marry Into Money’ was my way of scratching my 80’s rock itch. My guilty pleasures are Foreigner, Journey, Def Leppard, among other epic ‘80s bands,” Shane says. “I thought to myself, I’ve never made a proper rock and roll song! So, my longtime friend and epic guitarist Marshall Via and I turned up the amps to 11, and ‘Marry Into Money’ came to life.” The result is a joyful, high-energy, and undeniably fun track, the kind of song that’s impossible not to tap your foot or bob your head to.

Midway through the album comes “If I Run,” a sweeping, introspective track that serves as a gorgeous centerpiece to the project. Surprisingly, it’s one of Shane’s oldest songs: “I wrote ‘If I Run’ 9 years ago while on LSD. I recall feeling like I wanted to flee from the person I was at that point, a version of myself that wasn’t sustainable and had made numerous poor decisions.” Shane recorded the song with his previous band, but he wasn’t happy with the final version. “As too many cooks in the kitchen tend to do, we overcooked it.

The essence of the song was gone, replaced by vocoders and drum machines.” Luckily, “Can’t You Feel It?” offered Shane a second chance at a truly special track. “Now that I was the only cook in the kitchen, I felt like I could truly capture what the song always needed: simplicity. We started with piano, played by Sean Moran, to be the base layer that every other element in the song would refer back to. This, paired with Marshall Via’s distorted yet dreamy guitar work, and some big drums by Jack Maitra, gave me the tools I needed to produce this song how it was always meant to be.” The result is an incisive and moving exploration of the self, and finishing it gave Shane an unexpected sense of relief. “A version of me has finally come down from that LSD trip,” he says, laughing.

On “Can’t You Feel It?”, Whisker captures both the growing pains and the euphoria of finding your way in the world in your 20s. It’s the project of an artist navigating a new stretch of life with

music as both his compass and his way of making sense of it, and it’s the introduction of a truly exciting new voice in music.