Music: White Denim

Jeff Hemmings catches up with James Petralli

Singer-songwriter and guitarist James Petralli see their latest record, Corsicana Lemonade, as: “A barbeque record, essentially”, full of summery grooves (albeit the record is being released as the nights draw in and we’ve just experienced our worst storm for several years!) married with a country-funk/boogie-soul bent, classic ’70s pop and rock and riff-heavy. Still frenetic, still chugging along at a swift pace, White Denim have however found a newfound ease within their grooves, and will be finding new audiences with this more accessible sound.

In making a record closer to their live experience Petralli concedes that the band’s aim was to pull back from the complex song structures that took their cues from prog and jazz: “Initially, we did start by recording a bunch of rockist numbers, but we got kind of fatigued with it.”

With that in mind, Petralli, Austin Jenkins (guitar), Steve Terebecki (bass) and Joshua Block (drums) took up a longstanding invitation to record with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, following their tour together in early 2012. “We spent a day apiece on two songs and then the last three days, we just tried out every instrument we could get our hands on and laid out these kind of krautrock vamps. That studio is basically a museum; they have pretty much any instrument you could think of, so we just threw everything at it. Jeff was really adamant that we play live, so there was a lot of emphasis on the performances from the four of us being definitive. The spirit was to not have any studio fixing. When I listen to the new record now, it sounds like us learning to play that music, which is cool. To capture that freshness and that… uncertain certainty.”

The Chicago experience galvanised the four’s initial determination to make a different kind of White Denim record, and it took them just two months. They went back to Austin, outfitted a rented house as a studio and with local producer and ‘tone guru’ Jim Vollentine’s array of vintage radio broadcast gear, the resulting sound was warm and intimate. “He’s been salvaging from yard sales for the past 20 years,” Petralli reveals. “We had a pretty nice mixture of ’70s hi-fi equipment and really early tube equipment from the ’40s and ’50s.”

As well as a change in sound and process, the recent arrival of a baby in Petralli’s life imparted much inspiration. “We decided that we wanted to talk about relationships and family. Plus, we’d all been listening to a lot of the country music and pop we’d grown up with – stuff like Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt, but also lesser sung artists like Jim Ford… More groove-oriented country.”

The spirit and ghosts of bands like Little Feat and The Allman Brothers hover over the work of White Denim, and while they may have veered towards the path marked ‘mainstream’ with this new album, White Denim remain a truly spirited and exciting proposition. They continue to be one of finest guitar-based bands of recent years.

White Denim, The Haunt, Sunday 17 November, 7pm, £15

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