White Denim, our favourite Texan’s since, well, ever, have unveilled an entire LP’s worth of material available for you to download from their website. Apparently it’s not the “official” follow-up to 2008′s Fits, they’re still working on that, but just a clear out of stuff they’ve recorded. The band had this to say:

we hope that you are doing well today. the band has been straight up busy in the studio this summer with a fairly large collection of songs. we are pleased to share a handful of them with you right now. this record is something we made as a little summer retreat from our ongoing work on the third full length. many of these tunes have been bouncing around since the formation of the band back in 06. we were super pumped to utilize a few fresh and casual musical approaches on this record. we hope that you find something that satisfies you within this body of work. if you enjoy the music and feel compelled to support the group, please notice the support button beneath the download link and the image. we are going to be heading out on the roads this october and would greatly appreciate anything that you would feel comfortable contributing.
i would also like to add that we are still hard at work on the as yet untitled third lp. we expect to be wrapping that record at the end of the month. we can’t wait to play loads of this new material for you folks this winter and next year. at the moment i am writing all of the album info on a limited run of cd copies of ‘last day of summer’ that will be lovingly hand packaged and available at our fall shows. can’t wait to see you soon!
all the best,
james
Credits:
Recorded @ home by White Denim
Mixed by JB & Danny Reisch (www.gooddannys.com) @ Lakeside Studio
Mastered by Danny Reisch @ Lakeside and Good Danny’s Studio
…in Austin and Driftwood, Texas
Art by Michael Hammett

So head over to their website and enjoy the sounds!

Good Morning from Austin, Texas. This morning is awesome because it’s the first morning, ever, in my history of attending SXSW that I don’t have the slightest hint of hangover. I out-beered myself yesterday daytime so called the drinking quits around 10pm. I’m saving myself for the Ecstatic Peace showcase tonight. Expect a very brief and poorly written update tomorrow.

Yesterday was all about hanging out. I spent most of the day with Michael Azzerad who’s a great writer and brilliant to hang out with as he has loads of ace stories about going on tour with Guided by Voices and stuff. He took me to an outdoor show at the French Legitation Museum. Real Estate played and were fantastic. Dum Dum Girls played and were dull.

We walked for an eternity through the suburbs to find a house show I’d seen advertised on a blog. We got there just in time to watch Coasting who I really enjoyed. Two girls playing fuzzed out, lazy post-punk, although the drummer was great. Then this other band started setting up on the sheet of plywood used for a stage. They had two kits and two laptops and, to be honest, I was expecting them to be rubbish. So of course, I was wrong and they were great…

This is Pill Wonder. They’re from Seattle and they just released a record on Underwater Peoples. Live, they play percussive indie rock with plenty of energy and they actually looked like they were having fun, which is always a win. Here’s a video of them performing…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yesterday evening was a bit of a fail. Eagle Seagull weren’t as good as their name, and I bumped into YACHT on 6th and followed them to see some band that turned out to be one of the singers from Hercules and Love Affair’s new project. It sounded like a less good Hercules and Love Affair.

Explode into Colors were good, but not as impressive as their drummer who kicked ass. Male Bonding were great but then I felt bad watching them when there was so much other stuff on, so I left and tried to get in to see Bear in Heaven. I didn’t realise The xx were playing the same venue. FAIL.

I ended up watching White Denim with my friend Grace and eating all her M&Ms (thanks Grace). The party never ends.

Real Estate: “Beach Comber”

Coasting: “Hots For Teacher”

Pill Wonder: “Wishing Whale”

Explode Into Color: “Two For Jazz”

Renamed again since my last visit in December, the venue-formerly-known-as-Carling-Academy-Oxford-formerly-known-as-the-Zodiac played host to White Denim for the first of my two visits in a week, something of a first for me. Knowing the extent of my horrendous photographic abilities, I took along friend and budding photo-meister Stevie to our pre-arranged interview with the Texan rockers and subsequent gig-going session. Once we’d eventually navigated our way into the venue (a feat which we later discovered even the band sometimes found tricky) we had a thoroughly nice chat with drummer Josh Block and bassist Steve Terebecki about music recommendations, the tour, and so on, and when guitarist and singer James Petralli made his way in, we chatted to him too about the band’s origins and ambitions for the future.

Here we are, it’s 2009, you’ve been together about three years now, and you’ve just released your second album Fits. How does it feel right now to be in White Denim?
Steve: It’s good, we’ve been enjoying it. This is our fifth time back over here, we’ve been loving the humous and the van rides, the old buildings…
Josh: We still get to record and play, so…

It sounds like you’ve had a bit of a hectic time, has it been pretty frantic over the last few years?
Josh: It’s not that bad. We say five times, the first time was like two weeks, a bunch of several dates in London, second time was a proper tour. Third time was a longer tour. Fourth time was again short, two, three weeks. And this one’s three weeks again. It’s OK.

How pleased would you guys say you are with the new album, do feel you’ve moved on from the first one?
Steve: Yeah we’re very pleased with it. We always just try to record cool sounds, and there’s a fair few cool sounds on the record so we’re really pleased with it.
Josh: We wouldn’t put so much time into it if we felt it was a step backwards. If it were a digression it would still be a step forward.

Some bands seem to think they always have to move massively forward, thinking “we must do something much bigger than last time”. But I don’t get that from Fits, it’s a step forward but still in the same vein as Workout Holiday isn’t it?
Josh: A bit, yeah. I think conceptually it’s a much bigger step forward from us. I think sonically or aesthetically as a band it’s similar. I think there’s a perception issue there. A step forward may be easier to see when a band does a really cool promo shot that works awesome with the record, down to your clothes… I’m sure that happened to me once or twice, where visually seeing a band move forward made me think the music had moved forward. It’s still the same writing.

After the interview, we waited through one and a bit support acts (Cali Collect and Riot Park, if Songkick is to be believed…) who were decidedly ordinary and unspectacular, especially in light of what was to come. When White Denim emerged from their rather pokey dressing room at their allotted time of 9:45, there was some genuine excitement in the room. Despite hailing from the other side of the Atlantic and not having what you’d call overwhelming success or radio play in these isles, it was obvious that there were a few fans in attendance, but by the end you could confidently count many more.

How has the tour been so far?
Steve: It’s been great. All the shows have been full, people have been really enthusiastic, you can’t ask for better than that.

We know that bands can sometimes live or die by how their tours go, but you’ve got no worries about attendances and so on?
Josh: No, I think pre-sale-wise we thought it might be bad but it’s not.
Steve: We were a bit worried about tonight but it looks alright.

What do you think is next for the band? What are your ambitions as a band?
Steve: I think we’re just going to continue to record, try to make records, and play live. No next step, or striving too hard for anything like making costumes for a stage show or anything. I mean we love making records and so we’ll continue to do that.
Josh: And if something naturally comes out of that, like costumes…
Steve: We’re not going to rule out costumes…

Maybe that’s something to look forward to on the next tour, 70s Genesis-style costumes, that would be interesting… not following any master plan or planning arena tours then – taking it as it comes?
Josh: Yeah, if anything I’d prefer to do two nights in a row in small places.

What do you guys think makes White Denim different to other bands around – what makes White Denim White Denim?
Josh: I don’t know a lot of other bands right now. Sadly not up to date with modern music. I buy second hand records and stuff like that.
Steve: I don’t how many bands there are recording on their own and releasing. I’m sure there’s a lot, but I only listen to old records and the radio. And what’s on the radio bums me out.

The idea of any musical ensemble, whether it be a rock band or an orchestra, is surely that each member plays recognisably well, but that they constitute part of a bigger, excellent whole – helping the larger unit be more than the sum of its parts. White Denim are a wonderful example of this idea as applied to a power trio. You can focus on any one of the three and become absorbed in how great their playing is, and when you can tear yourself away to focus on the whole band, it’s only then that you really grasp just how excellent these guys are. Most noticeable is Josh’s drumming – enormously varied, it’s also monstrously powerful when it needs to be – which is usually – especially when he stands over his kit, battering the living hell out of it. Similarly gripping is the equally versatile guitar work from James, married to his vocals, which can go from wordless, soulful atmospherics to raging drama. Far from an ordinary bassist, Steve is also fascinating – his walking basslines are frequently a real thing to behold.

So would you say that musically, your influences go back to before you, rather than what’s around you now?
Josh: Yes!
Steve: Joyce, various pop princesses… XTC, Dukes of the Stratosphere….
Josh: Henry Cow, Magma… Funkadelic…

People always seem to say that you’re hard to pin down, do you ever classify yourselves?
Steve: It’s always a disappointing answer… just that we’re a rock n’ roll band!
Josh: We’ll have to come up with some cool name…

Maybe you should invent your own genre…
Josh: We tried that, it was embarassing to even say it. We’ll let somebody else do it, if we’re doing something that different they’ll come up with something, and if we’re not we’re just a rock n’ roll band.

You were saying you’re not really up on what’s around now musically but is there anyone you’d recommend, old or new, to TLOBF readers?
Josh: Mihachu. I saw her in Leeds and Steve and I were blown away. She’s talented, her band’s talented too.
Steve: I really like Cass McCombs. I was talking to a few promoters around here about him, he’s released four great albums and an EP, but he doesn’t seem to get a lot of love.

I guess it can be an uphill struggle – have you guys had to build up awareness of yourselves, or is that something that’s come naturally?
Josh: We’ve had to work pretty hard…
Steve: We’ve played a lot, toured a lot…
Josh: We toured for a year and a half – and the first twelve months of touring we were out for seven or eight months of that, it’s hard.

Do you think it’s touring that’s got you this far, in terms of an audience for the albums and singles?
Josh: I hope it’s both… we talk to people at shows who haven’t heard anything of us, besides what they heard on a CD or what their friends told them. But in the States it’s touring. Most of the momentum we have is based on going out there.

White Denim aren’t necessarily doing anything hugely new – they are a rock band, and the enormous list of genres people have attempted to pin on them reads like a bit of a mildly embarrassing farce in the face of their live assault. Yes there are snippets of psychedelia, maybe soul, country; maybe James does sound oddly like CCR’s John Fogerty for a few seconds at a time, but these reference points never overwhelm the pure White Denim-ness of their performance and they rarely, if ever, spring to mind while watching them. Ultimately the feeling is of just watching a band play grippingly, and the realisation that they are great, so much more enthralling than on record.

Labels are always talking about how everything has to mesh together, tours, records, photoshoots, interviews.
Josh: They’re doing that, but in the States we self-release, so none of us wants to tell the others that this stuff is neccesary. None of us wants to be the “label guy”.

The songs are very chaotic, they often seem structureless, how did you go about achieving that in the songwriting?
Josh: James penned most of the tunes and he’s not here to represent that. But he writes a lot – what I can say as far as the chaos goes is, when any of us bring an idea, brings it to the band, we don’t tell the others how to interpret it, and we’re open to make changes to the feel, the arrangement. We’ll have a simple idea, whether it be an arrangement or a simple melody, and let the other band members have their say. So I think that has a lot to say for a lot of the chaotic feels. Musical democracy is a lot more like anarchy than it is democracy.
Steve: Totally.

How do you go about translating all that into a live setting – how different are you as a live band?
Josh: Very different. Everything’s pretty much a medley, the songs are rearranged a lot of the time for the live setting.
Steve: It’s changed for four instruments including voice, whereas sometimes on the records there might be a couple extra. We just focus on playing it as a trio, it ends up being harder.

[James returns when Steve and Josh have to tell security that despite not having a pass, he's OK, really] James, we were talking a bit earlier about songwriting – can you tell us a bit about how the songs go together?
James: Well, I mainly write with an acoustic guitar. I sit on my porch and smoke a lot of cigarettes and think a lot about what parts these guys would be interested in playing. I spend a lot of time playing electric guitar and working on sounds, writing tunes that way as well.

If we take Fits as an example, was there a lot of material that didn’t make the album?
James: Yeah, a ton of material that we don’t get around to recording.

How do you decide what makes the cut?
James: Basically, whatever the other guys respond to most kinda makes it on the record. On most days it’s kind of like an auditioning process, we’ll turn up to the studio and play through quite a lot of ideas and whatever gets the most positive, immediate reaction is what we work on throughout the day. So yeah, we just kind of pitch ‘em. And writing with acoustic guitar, I’d say only 20% or 30% of the tunes I write really work for the group, but I do a lot of damage to my ears on stage so I never really practise with acoustic guitar! But I’ve got a bank of unused songs.

Besides allowing photographers to potentially stay in the photopit for a cheeky few minutes longer than they’d usually be able to, White Denim’s technique of playing their gigs as a series of three to four lengthy medleys is a great way of building audience tension in a naturalistic, fluid way. Dispensing with the usual song-clap-song-clap-song-clap formula, the medleys let the crowd gaze and nod in awe for a little longer, each song in the medley ratcheting up the excitement that little bit more, until it’s allowed to pour out for a correspondingly longer stretch of time when the medley ends. The band aren’t too big on stage banter, preferring to break only briefly before launching into the next barrage, but their reliance on playing rather than talking is still somehow endearing.

How did you guys get together?
James: Well, we had all been playing in bands of different styles for quite a few years. I started playing with Josh within a year of getting my first guitar, so it was really great. I feel like I might have learned at an accelerated level because I was lucky enough to play with musicians more talented than I was… so we played together on and off for a long time, we knew we wanted to start a band, we just didn’t know what to do. And we met Steve on the circuit, once we’d decided to start a rock band. We were playing in the same clubs in Austin. Steve had a really cool attitude on stage and also shredded his instrument. Those were wilder days, there was a club in Austin you could definitely trash, when you got on stage.
Steve: And we did, every time. We just trashed everything.
James: We trashed the stage, and Steve was in a band who trashed the stage…

So you were bound to get together! Do you think you’ve mellowed out, or is it just that there are more rules keeping you from trashing everything?
James: I think that at that point, at least for me, I was really interested in that because I was seeking a response, you know what I mean? I’d never gotten any real positive or negative feedback. The town that I played in was in the sticks of east Texas so there was no live music at all… so moving to Austin, I really wanted to do something to get attention, playing loud rock n’ roll music and being obnoxious, was what I thought would be a good way to do that. We don’t do that now because I think we’re a little but more comfortable with ourselves, we kind of got that out of our systems. Having played out for the better part of three years, you can start to see where you fit, we’ve had a lot of time to work on our playing, on our songwriting, and stuff like that so we’re a little bit more comfortable. I look back on wanting to trash the stage as a kind of subconscious thing to do.

So you can look back and say to yourselves that you’ve matured, to use that cliché?
James: Yeah, definitely. I think all of us are pretty comfortable in our musical roles in the band. We have a really open atmosphere in the studio and as far as the writing goes as well we all put a lot of trust in one another and try to respect the work that each of us does.

From what you’ve all said it sounds very collaborative, like there’s never one of you steamrolling over the rest.
James: Yeah, we all really appreciate the oppurtunity and recognise how fragile it is, you know? So anything we can do to preserve our sanity and stay in it… we’re still trying to figure it out of course but we are focused on trying to maintain a sort of harmonious relationship.

What do you think is next for White Denim, what would you like to happen next?
James: All I care about is making songs with these guys, I think that’s definitely in the near future! I what’s immediately next is to take a couple of days off after this tour and get back in the studio. We’ve still got a ton of ideas. I think we’ll continue to record and see what we can come up with. We don’t have any like direct goals as far as what we’re going to do next… this place is on one end of the kind of spectrum, I like to play smaller clubs. I wish the stage were a couple of feet lower, and that the ceilings were lower-
Steve: No barrier!
James: Yeah, no barrier! A huge part of what makes performing fun is a lack of space, a real connection with people. So we’re definitely not all that interested in writing a hit single to get on a bigger stage.

It reminds me of Led Zeppelin writing “The Ocean”, which supposedly is all about the thousands of fans they couldn’t see at their huge gigs because they’d become so massive.
James: Yeah, that’s not a situation we hope to be in… you never know, maybe the world will go crazy again and everyone might get into weird music! But then I guess our music isn’t as weird as I’d like it to be… we do play a lot of things that make us chuckle, we’re not doing a lot of brainiac stuff right now. But I think we all have it in us, definitely. What we were all doing before this group was probably a little bit too heady… [...] It’s a weird climate, I think that a lot of people on the business side of things aren’t taking as big risks as they would have. I was listening to a Frank Zappa interview in the 80s, how a lot of the hippies thought they were on the cutting edge, like “we’re the bosses of the labels now” and they kind of felt like they had an insight, and didn’t take as many risks as the older guys who’d had no clue and had just thrown money at freaks to get them int the studio! [laughs] There’s not a whole bunch of that going on, I guess. It’s a DIY music scene, I guess.

When White Denim wrap up the show, they do so by slowing down gradually, leaving the stage and still playing quietly as they make their way down the stairs and through the door that leads to their dressing room. It’s a lovely little touch, one that results in a brief pang of disappointment from some when technicians start taking the drum kit apart and then away, precluding an encore. Disappointment was not the order of the day though – this was an enormously satisfying show, a thrilling shot to the arm.

Photos by Stevie Denyer

White Denim on MySpace

Such is the strength and depth (to borrow a football cliché) of music Stateside at the moment that I find myself with three acts on heavy rotation at the moment from Austin, Texas, alone. OK, so Spoon haven’t done anything lately but they’re a band I revisit frequently, while Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is one of my favourites of 2009 thus far. White Denim is the latest addition to my Austin catalogue and some casual Googling reveals other familiar names that have breezed through my ipod shuffle at one time or another: The Octopus Project , Okkervil River, Explosions in the Sky, to name a few. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, Austin is the self-styled ‘Live Music Capital of the World’, a bold claim for only the 16th-largest city in the US (thanks Wikipedia). I haven’t seen White Denim live, but if Fits is anything to go by, they must be an exciting prospect.

An exhilarating rush that channels garage rock, psych, hardcore, classic rock and much more besides, Fits achieves what Crystal Antlers’ ear-splitting Tentacles didn’t quite: the spasmodic appropriation of multitudinous music styles into three-minute epics. Whereas on Tentacles the detail was often lost in a vortex of organ shredding, White Denim’s shape-shifting excesses are easier to track, despite their brevity. Far from being music for the attention-span depleted, White Denim are sonic adventurers who retain a pop lucidity while busily blowing your mind. There are outrageous Jimmy Page riffs, jazzy codas, bubbly skanks, lo-fi loops; seemingly no rules at all in fact on this restlessly inventive album.

The opener ‘Radio milk how can you stand it’ sets a ferocious tempo of sensationally OTT guitar soloing  and a pummelling rhythm section before flipping the script mid-way through, as they have a tendency to do, to craft something wholly new out of chaos that preceded.  The album remains at this volatile high tempo with ‘All Consolation’, which is like the distilled climax to some almighty jam, while the rifftastic ‘Say What You Want’ ends with some kind monster duel between guitar and sitar. By the fourth track, sung in Spanish, it’s all getting a bit much, even if the record is barely 10 minutes old, that the comparatively restrained – yet still frankly riotous – ‘I Start to Run’ is a freshener. Irrestistibly funky, ’I Start to Run’ is equal parts White Riot and The White Stripes: shouty vocals, a rollicking, stripped-down rhythm section, and another mid-point parlour trick – this time being a dubby skank pulled out of an apparently invisible Rastafarian hat.

The next four tracks seem to come in pairs: ‘Sex Prayer’ – a jazzy instrumental interwoven with skuzzy lo-fi loops - forms a cauldron of reverb-heavy psych with ‘Mirrored and Reverse’ , while ’Paint Yourself’ (”You’re always looking at yourself, deciding what you do not want to see”) and the unjustifiably short ‘I’d Have it just the way we were’ comprise a couple of jaunty, tripped-out ballads. ‘Regina holding hands’ later resumes this mood before erupting into improbably brilliant power pop, while ‘Syncn’ ends the album on an impressionistic note: a hushed collage of loops and a fragile falsetto from James Petralli. Fits is rousing, riotous stuff!
80%

White Denim on MySpace

White Denim – the fuzzed up scuzz indie rockers, whose new album Fits is out on the 22nd June – have announced a UK tour for around the same time:

Headline tour dates:

June
23 Bar Academy, Birmingham
24 Ruby Lounge, Manchester
26 Academy 2, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
27 Stiff Kitten, Belfast, Northern Ireland
29 Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Scotland
30 Digital, Newcastle

July
02 Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
03 Academy 2, Oxford
04 The Hop Farm, Kent
05 Talking Heads, Southampton
07 Thekla, Bristol
08 Heaven, London

The Gay Blades. Photograph by Sonny Malhotra

Yeeeeeee haaaaaa! This is the kind of news that makes us very happy indeed. TLOBF’s club night ILL FIT which we run in conjunction with our friends at uber cool London indie Something In Construction has sold out! This Monday, 18th May will feature the staggering lineup of New Jersey’s cock rocking duo The Gay Blades, DJ sets from TLOBF and our favourite Gothenburg duo Air France, plus a very special set from White Denim.

So if you wanted to come along – well, tough. You can’t. Sorry about that – but why not check out The Gay Blades whilst they tour up and down this fine land over the upcoming weeks.

MAY
15TH – LONDON, CLUB NME KOKO w/ JULIETTE LEWIS
16TH – BRIGHTON, THE GREAT ESCAPE FESTIVAL
18TH – LONDON – SOMETHING IN CONSTRUCTION SHOWCASE w/ WHITE DENIM AND AIR FRANCE @ OLD BLUE LAST
20TH – LIVERPOOL, 02 ACADEMY w/ WHITE DENIM
21ST – LEEDS, COCKPIT
22ND – MANCHESTER, HUNGRY PIGEON FESTIVAL DRY BAR
23RD – GLASGOW, STAG & DAGGER FESTIVAL
24TH – NOTTINGHAM, DOT TO DOT FESTIVAL
25TH – BARROW IN FURNESS, THE ROXY
26TH – HULL, THE LAMP
27TH YORK – THE DUCHESS
28TH LONDON, MOSHI MOSHI NIGHT @ HOXTON BAR & KITCHEN

White Denim, set to headline this months TLOBF club night

ILL FIT and ADVENTURES IN THE BEETROOT FIELD
present

ILL FIT 5:  SWEAT & BLOOD

WHITE DENIM (live)
THE GAY BLADES (live)
AIR FRANCE (DJ set)

+ ILL FIT DJs
+ free CDs, free shots and free, full and frank expression of views.

Good line-up, right?   Daaaaamn straight.

WHITE DENIM are doing a whistlestop tour of the UK;
THE GAY BLADES are settling in for a three week trek around the whole country (visit their MySpace for details) leading up to the June 8th release of their debut lp GHOSTS;
AIR FRANCE are over to host the party at St Etienne’s pair of Bloomsbury Lane shows and to remix a track from Fox Base Alpha and are staying to play this night too.

Now if this isn’t the coolest, hottest, sweatiest and dammit, sexiest night of the year so far, then I don’t know what is.

The summer starts right here.

We will of course be bringing for you a ton of swag, CDs, T shirts general loot as well as those stunning bands. Maybe even we will have the new free SIC mixtape, Listening Is Easy, for your delectation.   All new shit from SIC and close personal friends with a running order that will knock your fucking socks off.

Alas it ain’t free this time.  Don’t blame us.  But it’s £6 only.  It’s up to you but all I’m saying is.. Tickets here.

If you are thinking “that will sell out right away”, then I agree with you, smartypants

See you there.  Don’t bring a coat, it’s gonna be HOT as hell.

It’s that time of year again… We’re making our list and checking it twice, trying to find out who’s been naughty or nice. Yes, it’s our Album of the Year! More coveted than a shiny penny, more famous than the winner of last year’s X-Factor and guaranteed to start debate!

This year, to shuffle blame away from TLOBF HQ, we’re getting YOU, yes, YOU the reader, to vote for the albums YOU think are the best 2008 had to offer. We’ve whittled down a mammoth list of prospective albums to a mere 50. It’s tough work, but someone had to do it.

So, mouse button at the ready – get clicking! You can pick as many albums as you like, there are no limits. If you feel it’s worthy of “Album of the Year” status, then do the right thing and cast your vote.

If you need some help making that all-important decision, you can read our take on the albums listed in our 2008 archive here.

The poll will close on Friday December 12th.

There is a prize up for grabs for one lucky reader. Some very kind record companies behind the following 50 records have offered up a selection of prizes including: ultra-rare vinyl, posters, t-shirts and CDs by some of the nominees, plus a pair of tickets to see the sold-out Fleet Foxes show at London Roundhouse in February 2009. To be in with a chance of winning this mammoth and hugely exciting prize, enter your details at the bottom of this page. The lucky winner will be notified via email. Competition closes on Friday 12th December.

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