"Farm kid" Whitmore's gravel 'n' glass voice crusades for love

Authenticity: In post-racial 2009, is the point moot? The Obama-fied politics of noble survival suggest that authenticity comes where your cultural currency buys it. We can argue that truth is subject to the whims of Google, that selling out is keeping it real, that po-mo skepticism wins out over presumed bona fides.

We can hear the music of William Elliott Whitmore — who plays El Corazon Saturday night — and venture into the quagmire of authenticity. Or we can simply believe.

This believing, it's an act that brings a particular feeling of warmth and security and joy. Especially with this guy — you hear the diesel engine growl of his voice, the century of blues and folk tradition behind his banjo-driven stomps, the everyday relevance of his lyrics, and you succumb.

"Every musician borrows different styles and makes their own, but a thing early on for me was writing what I know," Whitmore says. "Don't try to sound like you're from somewhere else — you're a farm kid from Lee County, Iowa. Write what you know. And so how could it be any more real than that?"

Whitmore is calling from the same Lee County, Iowa, farm he grew up on, that he inherited from four generations of Whitmores, that's down the road from his uncle's house and his grandma's house. The 30-year-old's abridged artist bio includes his agrarian upbringing and teenage touring with Midwestern punk and hard-core bands, being indoctrinated into the hardscrabble DIY scene via Ian MacKaye and Fugazi.

"People didn't know what to think at first — all these loud bands and then I get up there with a banjo," he says. "It forced me to develop a style of playing loud, singing loud, to compete with these loud bands."

"I've been playing this music all my life," he adds.

A vivid and unusual story, it grasps at that crucial sense of authenticity. It contextualizes but does not define or defend the music found on Whitmore's new album, "Animals in the Dark" (coming out Tuesday on the label Anti). The music stands on its own.

Specifically, it stands on Whitmore's voice, a glass-on-gravel growl that makes Bob Seger sound like Barry Manilow. Voice is the main instrument on "Animals," especially the riveting first third of the album, whose closest musical kin is hip-hop, in the sense that the voice is right up front in the mix, and the backing is only a sparse-yet-insistent drum beat plus a little banjo. Whitmore's delivery is possessed and declarative like a soapbox orator — or an MC.

On "Mutiny," the albums allegorical opener, he barks, "The captain's been drinking below the deck / And this vessel's heading way off course / I want to wrap my hands around his crooked neck / And throw him overboard / I declare mutiny on this ship!"

"I got depressed thinking these are the worst times, and that's not true at all," Whitmore says. "There were worse times than this, and there will continue to be. There's poor people, there's rich people, there's war. It's been like that forever and it will always be that way. It was a little big of solace in my mind."

Songs like "Old Devils" and "Johnny Law" offer no emotional middle ground: Like the best blues musicians, Whitmore is severely pissed off. Exploitation, corruption and intimidation are specific targets of his venom, symptoms of a greater concern his music addresses.

"Beyond politics, beyond voting, beyond all that, just as humans to other humans, how are we gonna treat each other, how are we gonna be?" he asks. And immediately answers, "Love in your heart. That's how we win."

Whitmore plays at 9 p.m. Saturday, with Carrie Biell and Mia Katherine Boyle at El Corazon ($10 advance, $12 day of show).

Other must-see shows this week:

Sunday

The Gutter Twins feature the dueling throats of Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli working to out-smolder each other, at Showbox at the Market (8 p.m. Sunday; $20).

Wednesday

• Fresh off the release of "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today," David Byrne visits Benaroya Hall with a seven-piece band and a trio of dancers (8:30 p.m. Wednesday; $45).

• Classic prog at the Moore: Not so much Yes as Maybe, since singer John Anderson has been replaced by a cover-band guy found on YouTube, and keyboardist Rick Wakeman has been replaced by his own son (8 p.m. Wednesday at the Moore Theatre; $45 and $65).

Jonathan Zwickel: zwickelicious@gmail.com