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EVENT DETAILS |
White Denim, Brazos, His & Her Vanities
Music: Clubs:
When: 11/05/09 @ 8:30pm
Cost: $10 (18+)
Call: 268-1122
Web: whitedenimmusic.com
More Information:
WHITE DENIM
Thursday, November 5, 8:30pm
High Noon Saloon
Tickets: $10
Ages: 18+
Support: Brazos
www.myspace.com/brazosbrazos
www.myspace.com/hishervanities
Pitchfork:"Fits locks in and finds a groove strong enough to hang a hook on"
Rolling Stone: "Like Ike and Tina Turner..... White Denim never do anything nice and easy. The bands chopped up punk deliriumis effortless sorcery, evoking Talking Heads' dancing-bones rock, the dervish thrash of the Minutemen and the Strokes' pneumatic-guitar pop...White Denim is not simple work, but everything you get is nice and rough."- David Fricke
NY Times:“The Austin trio that can sound like the Ventures transplanted to Texas, psychedelic catapulted toward math-rock, ZZ Topon a caffeine binge or the early Talking Heads with a chip on their shoulder. White Denim should be the proverbial hard act to follow.”
Uncut 4/5:"Fits is even more gloriously schizophrenic and extreme than their debut".
Mojo 4/5:"...both brain-frazzlingly orgiinal and a fabulously sequenced whole...Fits is sublime"
Dazed & Confused:"Brilliantly insane, and like Workout Holiday, utterly unpredictable...it's absorbing on every level"
The Observer Music Monthly:"But for those who find 2009's US indie vanguard (the Grizzly Animal Projectors, the Dirty Bear Collective, those guys) a little too ethereal for their tastes, this down and dirty Austin, Texas power trio offer a marvelously rocking reality check."
The Independent:"A white-hot cauldron of sonic intensity"
After an incredible breakthrough year in 2008, White Denim celebrate the first year anniversary of Workout Holiday (Albums of the Year from Observer Music Monthly, Uncut, The Sun and Clash) by releasing the eagerly anticipated follow up Fits. 2009 promises to be as incendiary. The band returns for live dates in May, shows that are bound to be rammed after their now legendary UK shows that killed it at Bloomsbury Bowling, Borderline, Cargo and culminated in the you-really-should-have-been-there Dingwalls show in November 2008 – one of The Independent’s Gigs of the Year – “the kind of group that becomes one’s favorite band. If they carry on at this rate, they should be one of next year’s big crossover successes”.
When a band’s first album is unpredictable enough to invoke comparisons with artists as wildly diverse as hardcore innovators the Minutemen and professorial idiosyncrasy of Randy Newman, then you can reasonably assume its been made by people who care about music. Lots of it. Jazz, punk, funk, country, acid rock, even piano ballads – all these labels have been used, accurately, to describe White Denim. Their second record is more problematic though. It has to sound like them.
Fits; the title is both a knowingly bad pun and a reference to the odd tantrum endured in its creation- manages just that. Anyone familiar with the ferocious drive of the Texan trio’s renowned live shows, where songs merge into each other and the playing guides the direction of the performance, will recognize their approach. Recorded and produced by the band in their infamous studio/trailer, Fits is more coherent than debut Workout Holiday, yet sacrifices none of its imagination. Though there’s barely a pause between tracks the set ebbs and flows, ranging from the soft-hearted to the ferocious.
The band describes it, with only light sarcasm, as The Friendship Record. ‘We were congratulating each other for having good ideas,” says singer/guitarist James Petralli of the sessions, “We went through a lot of positive and negative things and came out of it a lot closer.”
Declared influences range from the obvious – the early works of Funkadelic, to the deep – drummer Josh Block has been listening to a lot of seventies Brazilian pop, and it shows. There are the curveballs you might expect from White Denim, but they are unifying and never forced. The mysteriously titled ‘Sex Prayer’ is an unexpected groove-led fusion riddim instrumental composed and largely performed by bassist Steve Terebecki. The frantic ‘Hard Attack’ is in garbled Spanish. More typical is the pummelling yet swirling upcoming single ‘I Start To Run’, as blunt as any sixties garage band that ever attempted rhythm and blues, yet dressed in a post-post punk arrangement that DFA would be proud of. Danceable rock music does not always have to fit the Brooklyn template. The playful touches act as a wonderful counterpoint to the soulful holler and keys/drums/harmonies second half of this killer tune. The woozy, fuzzed up ‘All Consolation’ extends the mind-expanding Texan tradition of Roky Erickson, Butthole Surfers and Secret Machines while ‘Everybody Somebody’ is their own take on classic rock, powered by nagging percussion and bubbling keys.
Yet White Denim can never be merely nostalgic. ‘Radio Milk’ and ‘Say What You Want’ indubitably rock, yet the rhythms driving them are quietly unsettling and anything but predictable. According to Petralli the songs “deal directly with the sense of paranoia that came with the congratulations we got. Once it’s out there it’s no longer yours. We’re just addressing the fears that come with that.”
The fabulously driving ‘Mirrored And Reversed’ has a ‘Suspicious Minds’ false fade that confounds expectations. Lyrically it deals with the contradiction of their current situation. “Being in a rock band is absurd for an adult. Until last year we lived our lives growing up, worrying about insurance and starting families. Now we do this. So it’s about being afraid of preserving your dreams,” says Petralli. Or, as he sings, “Hoping the hopes of a child”. More prosaically, he describes the music as ‘a good steady shuffle.’ This could possibly be one of the most humble understatements of the year.These are songs born of experience and doubt. The skipping country-rock of ‘Paint Yourself’, closer to the Meat Puppets than Laurel Canyon, the heartfelt ‘Regina Holding Hands’, White Denim’s take on Shuggie-style soul music (and signals, if it were needed, the emergence of a great singer), and the gentle, moody closer ‘Syncn’ details a relationship that can’t succeed. As bold a closer as ‘Radio Milk’ is an opener, with James’ voice nudged and encased by a fantastically restrained drum workout and predatory instrumentation until the vocal breakdown rounds out a triumphant return.
For all the contemplation, Fits is effortlessly fun. There are more elements of jazz and soul than previously. Vocals sit in the mix rather than on top, effectively another instrument. The playing is, again, deft without being showy, and there are melodic hooks to spare. So what’s the secret? “We set the tempos high and set off,” says Petralli. It’s that simple. And it works. In spades.
Brazos:
Tripwire:
"Their sound is all at once jazzy and melodic, moody and bright. They are Radiohead’s younger siblings half the time and the other half roll along lazily, like the central Texas River from which they derive their name...perfect cohesion of time and melody. The ability of solid and capable song craftsmanship is readily apparent. "
Daytrotter:
"Martin Crane, the leader and songwriter of the band, does big and bombastic on a smaller scale. He takes the massive span of what a group such as U2 or My Morning Jacket builds into their everyday, musical actions and boils it down into something that he and his talented mates know how to play with. They aren't in need of a surefire arena rocker nor a super ballad that Crane can belt and all the rest can dress up into a Coldplay sort of wall of towering sound, or more so, toweringly ubiquitous lyrics that are meant to be "worldly" in that they are for the everyman and everywoman, hinting at so many universal points."
Austin Chronicle:
"Brazos stole the show as headliner, reformed as a trio after the departure of guitar maestro Nathan Stein. Frontman Martin Crane soulfully plied new songs such as the swooning 'Day Glow' and mellow groove of 'Passenger,' which warrant anticipation for Brazos' upcoming release."
Gorilla Vs Bear:
After being extremely impressed by Brazos' new material during their pre-Grizzly Bear Hot Freaks! set, I had their upcoming EP "A City Just As Tall" on blast during most of my drive home.
Hailing from Austin’s fertile indie music scene, Brazos began as the solo recording project of songwriter Martin Crane, who debuted his smart, lyrical songs in late 2007 with the acclaimed EPs Feeding Frenzy and A City Just as Tall. While Feeding Frenzy, written and recorded in one feverish weekend, emerged as a delirious brand of catchy, multi-layered minimalist folk, A City Just as Tall came just as quickly but sharper, both lyrically and musically, and proved that Mr. Crane was up to an intriguing start. Crane tapped friends, guitarist Nathan Stein and bassist Paul Price, and after rolling through a few drummers including White Denim's Josh Block, finally selected local drum-maestro Andy Beaudoin, whose credits include a Master's in Jazz Studies from the New England Conservatory in Boston, to play the new material, and Brazos was born.
2008 and '09 found the band opening up local shows for likes of Grizzly Bear, Shearwater, Vampire Weekend, and the Bowerbirds among others, taping an Austin City Limits Stage Left episode, contributing a song to Esopus magazine, and recording live sessions for WOXY and Daytrotter, all the while working on the first full length.
With Phosphorescent Blues, a hypnotic tour-de-force that combines raw energy and dance rhythms with the subtle intricacies of jazz and folk, Brazos make good on their shown promise. Written in one blissful week in Crane's home in far South Austin in 2008, Phosphorescent Blues is not just a collection of songs, but a cohesive document of a state of mind. Splitting the recording process between home and the studio, it is apparent that the group has come together across the board of collaboration in a solid cohesive effort, yet they have created something that comes off as a breezy study in effortlessness. "I was listening to a lot of Steve Reich and Simeon Ten Holt... and reading Adrienne Rich," Crane states. "Also hanging out with friends who were into house music, and I think all that rubbed off." The influence is heavy. The adapted Rich poem, "The Observer" serves as a centerpiece to the album. As Crane puts it, "I had to change the phrasing of the poem to fit the melody... and that influenced the way the rest of the album was written, thinking of it more as writing a poem and then figuring out a way to phrase it to a melody, especially when the music behind was repetitive and hypnotic... To me, the best songs work with that idea."
It's hard not to think of the album any other way. It is lyrically awash with vivid imagery of cityscapes and late nights on downtown sidewalks in "Tell", parking garages filled with rambunctious hot rods on "Downtown Boys" and early morning market vendors on "My Buddy". Two minds hang on the other's words of love and inspiration on "For So Long Now" and we're brought along on an afternoon stoop-party to drink cheap wine with friends in "Day Glow". It is all phrased like free form poetry over rolling bass lines and pulsing percussion, the guitars adding ambiance in deft touches, like a breeze rolling across the overgrown grass.
The next stretch in the growing arm of Brazos is to unleash Phosphorescent Blues on the masses. There's a tour up the east coast supporting White Denim planned where the boys are ready showoff a slightly slimmed down and tighter trio with the unfortunate departure of Stein's guitar to graduate school. But Crane is insistent upon the betterment of the group. With a supporting slot on one of the hotter tours of the fall and an album full of promise ripe for release, it's hard not to be.
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