White Denim

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing since 2013, though – just keeping the band together and recording new work has been a daunting process for lead singer James Petralli and bassist Steven Terebecki, after two of their bandmates quit.

“I’m definitely a creature of habit for the most part,” Petralli says. “It was nerve-racking because we’d gotten really used to that quartet thing. To replace half of the group was definitely a shake-up. Creatively I think that it was OK.”

Suddenly, White Denim were no longer a quartet but a two-piece. Not for long, however – soon they were bolstered to a sextet with the addition of new members, all working in the capable hands of UK producer Ethan Johns (Laura Marling, Ray LaMontagne). Getting Johns to produce Stiff was a bold move for White Denim, as the only producer they’d ever worked with in the past was Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy – and that was only on two tracks from Corsicana Lemonade.

“Ethan really likes things to be representative of how the band sounds live,” Petralli says. “There’s no studio trickery or anything. He was kind of just letting us figure it out. In a couple of cases he was super involved, so his sensibility definitely shaped a couple of those tunes, for sure. It was super collaborative: there were no boundaries. Why have a guy in the studio if you’re gonna have a muzzle on him?”

Stylistically, White Denim’s influences are the same as ever, and still representative of the Texan musical landscape.

“The music that we hear is a lot of blues, classic rock, soul, R&B and folk music, so I think that stuff makes its way into our music. Y’know: Little Feat, Hendrix, Lee Hazlewood, that kind of thing. I don’t think that we’ll make a crazy left turn. I think the way that we thought that this album would work best is if we went back to the ethos that we had in the early days. I wasn’t going to try and make a huge statement here or anything. It was just gonna be a straight ahead rock’n’roll record.

“You guys are probably over Kevin Parker and Tame Impala, but I really like their stuff. It’s funny. With rock’n’roll I would typically say that American bands kind of just do the thing; there’s a lot more raw edges and it’s less refined. Whereas a British or an Australian or Japanese band do it in such a studied way, like it’s almost perfect. You could argue that the way The Beatles and The Rolling Stones did American music was even better – it’s just like there’s a little bit of distance there, maybe even a little bit more acting.”

The nine-track LP Stiff was recorded live in the studio over an 18-day period, so fans can expect the new material will translate to the stage even better than Corsicana Lemonade did. And we may well see White Denim back on these shores in the near future. The band made waves at the 2013/’14 Falls Festival, and Petralli’s enthusiasm suggests White Denim enjoyed being in Australia as much as we enjoyed having them.

“I hope that we can make the trip [to Australia] as soon as December. We had a blast when we were over for the Falls Festival and can’t wait to return.”