White Denim Looks to the Past and Future with ‘Stiff’

White Denim - Best New Bands

San Fransisco - iTunes is kind of the worst, sometimes. If you’re like me – which is to say, unnecessarily anal about the organization of one’s music library – then the seemingly painstaking problem of getting one album that, for some reason or another, is separated from the rest of that artist or group’s material (usually by some silly, minute detail) in your library, to be incorporated with the rest, can seem like some sort of micro-ordeal. It really isn’t that important – at least that’s what you keep telling yourself – but it just drives you crazy sometimes. This recently happened to me with Austin rockers White Denim, as the band’s new album Stiff refused to assimilate with the rest of White Denim’s music in my library. It wasn’t until just now that I thought that maybe – just maybe – my iTunes library was trying to tell me something.

White Denim – the rock outfit from Austin, Texas known for its brand of guitar-driven blues/Americana-infused style – has been releasing music since 2007, and has been quite prolific in the process. In 2013, White Denim released Corsicana Lemonade – the band’s last full-length release – which marked the band’s fifth OR sixth LP, depending on which circles you run in (there is some debate surrounding whether or not the 2008 debut LP Workout Holiday was really the first; some say Exposion was, which was released later that year). Despite arguments debating such semantics, the band has been almost relentless in its efforts of churning out gritty yet provocative rock music over the past decade or so, effortlessly blending elements of early progressive rock, American blues, and even metal at some points. This month’s Stiff – officially the band’s seventh full-length – grinds along in that same fashion, carving another tally into the rugged bark housing the tree of American rock, whose roots dig deep into the soil of the culture.

White Denim’s music is almost always assembled in the same careful, mechanical way that a John Deere tractor would be built: sturdy, stalwart, and highly efficient… a structure meant to last a lifetime. The gears never stick, and they leave no room for error; it purrs with boisterous longevity. 2011’s D was a surprising venture into what can only be described as the band’s closest attempt to a concept album, with each song roaring into the next with precision and vitality, and while Corsicana Lemonade remains a welcome departure from such a format, everything about Stiff screams reinvention, from the album cover featuring a woman’s underpants filled with cacti (somewhat reminiscent of the cover to Ween’s 1994 album Chocolate and Cheese) to the jammed out refrain of “So be yourself / try to have a good time” of “Ha Ha Ha Ha (Yeah).” Never before in White Denim’s career have they so embraced the sound of those who have preceded them, and it works so, so well because it is all contextualized brilliantly in contemporary context.

White Denim - Stiff - Best New Bands

I’ve always been impressed with White Denim’s communal spirit in every studio session – the band’s live show is something to behold as well – and though White Denim has seen some lineup changes throughout its journey (who hasn’t though?), the band keeps its sound coherent and, as time goes by, continuously intriguing. While I was living in the south a few years ago, the downfall of a lot of smaller acts I would see at neighborhood bars, around New Orleans, was always the unwillingness to experiment. This isn’t to say that Stiff is the stuff of newfound, masterfully embraced inspiration (“Brain” sounds like it could’ve been lifted from the Beatles Revolver sessions), but there’s enough wiggle room that it’s noticeable and successful. White Denim has the ability to tweak its sound just so that it creates welcomes in the music: these earthy gaps are enough to differentiate periods in the band’s career without straying too far from a style of homegrown Americana that creates a sturdy arc to a still-blossoming career. The band’s truest talents and basic instinct are a solid backbone from which it has the ability to stretch its voice.

Take D’s “Street Joy” for example: this was perhaps the first prominent ‘slow-jam’ the band did, and it’s brilliant, because White Denim was able to dive into the sphere of heartfelt indie rock while still rooting itself in the vertebrae the band had already created. Songs on Stiff, like “Take It Easy (Ever After Lasting Love),” crane their necks to observe other stylistic approaches – this one in particular exploring the soulful embrace of trailblazers like Otis Redding and Al Green – but facets of the band’s signature tone bleed through, whether it be the up-tempo percussion or honed fret work White Denim is known for.

More than half the songs on Stiff have some sort of parenthetical reference held within their titles, meaning that each of these tracks have some sort of backpedaled significance the band wants the listener to be privy to. The first track “Had 2 Know (Personal)” is cacophonous in its initial attack of frenzied, cascading guitar riffs, but there is something lying within the song that is meant to be drawn out through the listener’s experience, a poetic form that is pushed as the lyrics take charge a handful of measures in when the instrumentation is stripped away to reveal vocals coasting over a jostling current of classic rock undertones that don’t subside until more than two minutes into the track. The same can be said of the disco/dub-tinged “(I’m The One) Big Big Fun” and lead single “Holda You (I’m Psycho)” – though not to the same exact degree, especially in the latter, which placates itself in a quiet storm of orchestrated improvisation that invokes memories of the Grateful Dead and Phish… both known for their “read between the lines” lyrical structure that has formed veritable armies devoted to their respective significances among such crowds.

The last three tracks of the LP – some of the few that lack the parentheses cutting each title into two disparate clauses – are not made any lesser by their relative simplicity, rather they give us the more straightforward approach to the sort of White Denim songs longtime fans are accustomed to. “Real Deal Momma,” the first of the three, is basted in churning electric organ punches highlighted by deep bass plucks that bring to mind the kind of razor-edged sentimentality of early Allman Brothers tracks, bolstered by the titular, short-stanza chorus that pegs the listener into classic, blissfully familiar song structure. “Mirrored in Reverse” sounds like the band Boston took a trip to Dallas and totally reworked its entire catalog into one song, and album closer “Thank You” slows things down to what might be a little too Dead-esque for White Denim, but it still works, with vocalist James Petralli doing his best Garcia over muted percussion and intermittent electric reverberations.

Stiff is both a step forward and a step backward for White Denim. The quality of the music is as strong or stronger than it has been in several years, and the step backward I refer to is meant only to illustrate the band’s willingness to step back in time a little bit, as if to celebrate those who have paved the way for them (much like Daft Punk’s highly deliberated 2013 LP Random Access Memories). This LP feels both old and new at the same time, and refreshes the ear in a way that a stiff mixed drink would do a weary traveler on a hot Texas day. I’m still not quite sure why my iTunes won’t incorporate it with my other White Denim albums, but perhaps it’s just meant to be in a different category, on some different level… even if that level is just one push of the Up Arrow key away.

Stiff is now available on iTunes, via Downtown Records. White Denim is currently on tour throughout the summer, mostly in North America but also in the U.K. later this year. For more information and tour dates check out the White Denim Facebook page.
Corey Bell

Corey Bell

Corey Bell is no stranger to music.Having spent the better part of the past decade at concerts and music festivals around the globe, he finds he is most at home in the company of live music.Originally a native of New England, he has since taken residence in New York and New Orleans, and now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.He achieved his Bachelor of Arts from Goddard College in Vermont via an undergraduate study entitled “Sonic Highways: Musical Immersion on the Roads of America," in which he explores the interactions between music, natural environment, and emotion while travelling along the scenic byways and highways of the United States.His graduate thesis, “Eighty Thousand’s Company,” features essays regarding the historical and socio-economic facets of contemporary festival culture intertwined with personal narrative stories of his experiences thereof.He is the former editor of Art Nouveau Magazine and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from California College of the Arts.
Corey Bell