White Denim
The Republic, 8/27/08
 After discovering that Los Angeles-based music blog Aquarium Drunkard had struck some sort of promotional deal with The Republic, I checked the venue's online calendar and, sure enough, the site is presenting some really cool new bands there over the next few months. White Denim, hailing from Austin, Texas, is one of these Aquarium Drunkard sponsorees, so even though my knowledge of them was fairly limited (I listened to two of their songs online before I left my house), I figured I would give them a try. After all, Aquarium Drunkard and I are often simpatico when it comes to taste.
We arrived early unintentionally, but it turned out for the best; the first opener, Restavrant [sic], might have topped White Denim as my favorite part of the show. The duo was from Victoria, Texas, and they are what would happen if the North Mississippi All-Stars lost their instruments and washboards and had to make them themselves. In other words, it was bluesy and country, and the homemade drum kit was comprised of an empty gas can, what looked like a cat scratching post and some Texas license plates hammered, stuck on a cymbal stand and held together with bike chain. They did a slide guitar cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising," and a handful of unpredictable, swampy originals. They were effortlessly likeable and really good.
Next up was local band Big Rock Candy Mountain. Self-billed as "fun, euphoric and loud," they sounded to me like prog rock with an occasional, surprising, choir-grade vocal harmony.
Finally, sometime around midnight, roadies lined up all of White Denim's instruments, including the drum kit, right at the front of the stage. All three positions had a mic, leading me to expect the drummer in the middle to be the lead singer. As it turns out, his mic was more for show, but he did provide another form of entertainment by continuously looking at a mysterious spot above the audience members' heads for most of the set. His enamored gaze towards the upper balcony, which was uninhabited and uninteresting to the plain eye, eventually led every single one of us on the floor to turn around curiously to see what he was looking at. But nothing was there.
If I had to describe the music of White Denim in one word and one word only, that word would be frantic. Frantic in the sense that the drums, guitar and bass were all so loud that you could barely hear their voices, which seemed to be going so quickly that you wouldn't have understood the words anyway. The guitarist, even while belting it out at such a rapid pace, did manage to make a variety of fantastic faces and the bassist was grinning at stage left the whole time, occasionally taking that power chord stance you get extra points for in Guitar Hero.
The songs were hard to peg, with one starting off almost reggae but ending like the hard-rocking Raconteurs. The next song had definite jam band influences, and one started off with such a slow, strumming intro that I thought we were heading into the mellow, singer-songwriter portion of the evening. The immediately following burst of cacophony let me know otherwise, and the electricity that pervaded the whole set definitely lent White Denim a psychedelic quality.
With lots of starts, stops and timing shifts, it was sometimes hard to tell when one song ended and another began; I'm really not sure if we heard 15 short songs or five lengthy ones. From verses that didn't mesh with the music to a completely danceable chorus and back again (check out the single, "All You Really Have to Do" for an idea of what this sounds like), White Denim might just be an acquired taste. They still weren't inaccessible, though, and since they were voted Best New Band at the 2008 Austin Music Awards, you'll probably be hearing more from them either way.
~Meghan Jones
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