White Denim

Barfly, London - 4 Apr 2008

by Jim Merrett

Our great white hope

"Think about how tightly you would have to squeeze a stone to get a diamond. Ponder over an elephant trying to get a condom over its head. Imagine Jim Davidson in a gay sauna and how tight he might clench his buttocks. This is tighter"

Ronseal: we all know it does exactly what it says on the tin. That said, if you’re like me, you might not know what that actually is. On the flipside, you can’t judge every book by its cover or indeed handle. Step forward White Denim, who aren’t the 1980s hairspray New Romantic revivalists that you might have expected. Against the current grain, this trio-with-brio instead plunder the mighty rock echoes of the 1970s, Plant and Page their hoary Norse gods.

White Denim is a sweaty meat machine that happens to exist in the form of three separate human beings. There is nothing as distinct as a rhythm section to speak of, with all three members singularly working towards a shared throbbing cycle of musical grunt. Think about how tightly you would have to squeeze a stone to get a diamond. Ponder over an elephant trying to get a condom over its head. Imagine Jim Davidson in a gay sauna and how tight he might clench his buttocks. This is tighter.

Hailing from Austin, Texas – the city most British bands are clambering over each other to play every spring – White Denim are the homegrown buzz band that take the hyperbole and turn it up a notch.

If the grimacing face of good-looking dude from Flight of the Conchords look-a-like (only better looking) frontman James Petralli and drummer Josh Block’s inability to stay behind his drumkit are not enough, then perhaps bassist Steve Terebecki’s uncanny likeness to Lil’ Chris will keep you entertained. Then there’s the songs – crickey.

Consider for a second the volume of money poured into the CERN proton accelerator in Geneva. And yet with something as rudimentary as rock ‘n’ roll, White Denim provide evidence for the interconnectedness of all matter in the universe. Three humans this in tune with each other is surely the closest we’ve come to proving string theory so far.

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