White Denim
Fits (Downtown Music)The Fits and starts shaking and quaking this psychedelic shack in short, sharp bursts of fragmented soul and fractured R&B are the sum total of this flagship local trio’s second LP. The gathering chaos and tumbling beat wrapped around a barbed bassline on opening greeter “Radio Milk: How Can You Stand It” reverberates a decided 1970s sonic warp, analog thick with vinyl width – poked guitars, holler harmonics, and disorientation – while the 1960s pop shambolism of “All Consolation” ticks a Motor City riot, and the stoner rock transistor shred of “Say What You Want” talks pulsing drift, rustic Indian accents, and surf undertow. The two-minute progressive lockdown of “El Hard Attack Dcwyw” keeps pace with the tribal incantation and spasms of echo guitar on “I Start to Run,” but “Sex Prayer” pulses with Electric Prunes organ atmospherics woven around percussion filigree and blaxploitation boogie, bleeding into the Moroccan hashish waft “Mirrored and Reverse,” one of Fits‘ more fully formed jams. Vocal razzmatazz and a beat-poet sizzle make “Paint Yourself” the disc’s most obvious radiogram to underground programming, though the falsetto percolation of “I’d Have It Just the Way We Were” dishes out its own instant nostalgia. The revolution rock riffage of grand funk steam engine “Everybody Somebody” matches acid rock guitar harmonies to espresso machine rhythmic choogle, but the fidgety acoustics of penultimate supplication “Regina Holding Hands” preps a closing stew of melody and mood on “Syncn,” with its nervy jolt of chant. Prone to Fits? Don’t swallow your tongue.
This article appears in October 23 • 2009.
