Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 22/06/09
Label: Full Time Hobby

White Denim are a tricky bunch to pin. One second they're showing a bit of hard rock razzle dazzle, the next they're wading through seedy, jazz-funk swamps, vocalist James Petralli hupping and slurring over louche bass and cowbell. The track's "Everybody Somebody", one of 12 from new album "Fits", and even the cowbell sounds terrified of it. The Texan trio are a remarkably unpredictable act, a band whose collective imagination allows them to begin alone with an acoustic guitar and climax in a street parade of brassy gusto and wailing blue-eyed soul ("Regina Holding Hands").

The chaos engulfing "Fits" makes the record an entertaining ride, but initially it's hard to make much sense of the thing. It sets out in what Yahoo! Music now recognises, thanks to the South African football community, as the sound of vuvuzelas: a horn whose harsh, monotonous blare has annoyed living rooms across the planet recently thanks to TV coverage of this summer's Confederations Cup.

Thankfully, it's not permitted to stick around too long here, White Denim banishing it with a gurgling, get-up-and-go bass line that gives way, in turn, to drumming by that excited lad off "The Muppets", a pair of flanged guitar solos and staccato bursts of something you imagine they think constitutes a 'chorus'. After four torrid minutes, proceedings finally stutter to a close sounding like a Dexy's Midnight Runner being trampled to death by elephants in a Greek restaurant, sax toots, bass stomps, cymbals smash. It's a fickle thrill and fairly harrowing - a great way to make an entrance, in short.

More thrills await - "I Start To Run", which finds Petralli trying to shake off his paranoia by just shouting really loudly, is a raucous treat, while the surprisingly more sedate, cop show jazz of "Sex Prayer" is loose and easy, sounding a bit like a Madlib cut. Both impress, but "Fits"' undoubted high-point comes with "Mirrored And Reverse", a real brooder of a track that benefits from its commitment to a Doors-y groove while simultaneously recalling Bowie's sublime "Width Of A Circle". Despite chancing, though, upon these islands of contentment the album fails to truly settle, conveying the sense that it's never quite satisfied with itself.

White Denim's never-ending quest for fulfilment grows to be distracting. You suspect "Fits" would fit better live, where the audience have no choice but to go with it, but here the trio sound slightly too pre-occupied with pleasing themselves rather than the listener, greedily ripping through riffs with a tenacity that, while impressive, is often ultimately self-defeating.

    by Kev Kharas