Album Review: White Denim, 12

Onetime Austinite conjures Seventies garage rock on dozenth LP

Reviewed by Raoul Hernandez, Fri., Dec. 6, 2024

Among the multitude even ... and then there stood one.

A Walt Whitman-esque legion of men and women make music on White Denim’s 12, which notches a dozen full-lengths since the onetime Austin trio’s self-released debut single “Let’s Talk About It” in 2007. Alex Coke on calliope, Balmorhea multi-instrumentalist Aisha Burns firing up her fiddle, and especially the group’s original rhythm roar Josh Block and Steve Terebecki on “Your Future as God” all climb aboard the White Denim hovercraft for another completely and uniquely experiential trip through the musical multiverse.

photo by Charlie Weinmann

As ever, guitar whisperer and singer/songwriter/conceptualist James Petralli occupies center stage, not only as the endeavor’s sole constant, but by circumstance, necessity, and temperament, he’s now the entire enterprise’s James Tiberius Kirk – conscience, captain, king.

“It was out the window with the 'band on the floor’ idea – even the idea of a band,” Petralli states in the new album press, generated from the “converted one-car garage adjoining his Pasadena residence which now serves as White Denim’s HQ.”

Los Angeles landed the Petrallis during COVID, not long after we checked with him on March 31, 2020: “I am sheltering with my family at home [in Austin]. I have a wife and two children, ages 7 and 5. White Denim’s studio is a private residence in East Austin, so I’ve been lucky to be able to keep making daily trips there in order to continue working in some capacity.” What followed stuck. White Denim’s oeuvre leading into and through the pandemic bottles a thrillingly retro-futuristic Wizard of Oz archetype.

Block, Petralli, and Terebecki gunned five kinetic LPs, with the final one, 2013’s Corsicana Lemonade, approaching Wilco in its combustive universality. Six years later on Side Effects, Petralli’s guitar-taming still led the way for 29 exhilarating minutes, yet digital manipulation began twiddling in earnest even as skronk (“Hallelujah Strike Gold”) flirted with a free jazz approach to rock – free rock – which might just describe White Denim from its first note.

Reportedly whipped up in a month by Petralli, World as a Waiting Room (2020) poured skittering post-punk into a digitally rockist kaleidoscope. Recall Neil Young’s Trans futurism or Joe Ely songbyter Hi-Res, not to mention Shinyribs’ isolation pastiche Late Night TV Gold. Inspired by DJ Screw, Crystal Bullets // King Tears (2021) wept an art-damaged pandemic head swim – all angular melodies, gently fractured rhythms, and three-minute acid pop – while Raze Regal & White Denim Inc. (2023) pivoted to boutique UK imprint Bella Union with slick soul rock that vibes relaxed and yacht-y, but hardwired.

12 follows suit and with a greater cohesion – fusion – as Petralli and his sonic munchkins admirably conjure Steely Dan.

“Light On” opens what the home-schooling bandleader calls his Seventies garage rock record atop Grateful Dead tones and a Who-like bridge, never telegraphing what time or tempo it will assume. Tour tome “Ecolining” syncs a tumbling lyric (“mind over mass/ this is going fast”) to a lithe squiggle and run with the wind in its hair and shaggy dog out the window. “Flash Bare Ass” cues up an indie “Come Dancing” moment, a ballroom bopper of hop/skip/jump ilk, while “Look Good” alights Tameca Jones’ back-alley disco vox ripe for a Boogie Nights remake.

Side two downshifts into a Dan mode that sounds slightly automat at times (“I Still Exist”), but goes out swinging Billy Ocean (“Swinging Door”), a George Harrison-like solo (“We Can Move Along”), and Fleetwood Mac (“Hand Out Giving”).

“The record dips into lilting dissonance – overtly synthesized, confoundingly loopy, [and] heart-wrenching loveliness – revealing gorgeous textures and layering at every sampled beat.”

So opined the Chronicle about Radiohead’s Kid A. Atop 12, White Denim completes its own paradigm shift.

White Denim

12 (Bella Union)

Gumma

SWEETNESS OF NOTHING (1turtlerecords)

Amir Pirayandeh leads these self-proclaimed “bozo rockers from space” through a prog rock odyssey complete with jazzy keyboard solos and psychedelic guitar flourishes.