white out

Texas natives White Denim are the band that have me head-over-heels in love with new music again. After a sparse patch last year that saw little other than welsh songstresses, X Factor winners and indie landfill, small murmurs citing a band of music masterminds began infiltrating the ears of those in the know. The rumours gathered strength after the general release of White Denim’s debut album Workout Holiday; a refreshing piece of garage-rock-with-a-twist that secured a fast track lane that took the band all the way to November 18th 2008; the night they earned their name in Britain. White Denim’s gig at Dingwalls was hailed as the gig of 2008 in most of those yearly review things that take place of precedence in publications throughout December and received countless lashings of five-star reviews all over the media, from newspapers to music magazines, music programmes to the scene kids. Music finally had something to be excited about.
So many times we find ourselves mouthing the words ‘the Next Big Things’ at new acts for reasons that are so wrong. Either we’ve read a biased review somewhere, or we’ve heard good things from our friends in Shoreditch, so rarely these days is the Next Big Thing actually branded this for their music, and inevitably, they don’t last. Until now.
The oddest blend of people aesthetically; the bespectacled Steve Terebecki, dwarfed by his bass guitar, stands at nearly a foot shy of the other two impossibly lanky members. In regards to the music, no two songs sound the same; professional recordings that sound like demos with heavy bass lines and scratchy guitar riffs take the band back to the seventies, then forward in time with vocalist James Petralli’s Hives-like staccato barks. A concoction of cowbells, sand-shakers, cigarettes and tequila, a sprinkling of MC5 and some seriously bluesy undertones come together to make Workout Holiday the best album of 2008, and it was all recorded in a 1940’s Spartan trailer- talk about sticking to your roots eh?
I try not to have regrets in life, but if I could go back in time to the time when my brother said, ‘Hey Jess, wanna go see White Denim at Dingwalls on Tuesday?’ I and said, ‘Sorry buddy, I’m working,’ I would give 2008 me bloody good kicking.