Austin Sound

4/3/08
As their final offering for the awesome label/blog RCRD LBL, Austin hometown heroes White Denim have delivered “Goldie Locks,” which serves up some more howling, bluesy licks and evil bass lines. You can download the track here along with “World as Waiting Room,” “Paint Silver Gold,” and “Mess Your Hair Up,” from last summer’s Let’s Talk About It vinyl debut.

The trio is apparently currently cavorting around Europe, at least according to their myspace, but will be back stateside in a couple of days to start a massive US tour that will run through May. On their previous US trek, they were each given a disposable camcorder to record their adventures, and Jason Archer and Carlos LaRotta of local film outfit Birds on Fire have edited them into a pretty sweet video for the song “IEIEI.” Check it out below.

1/9/08
After a big debut year in 2007, White Denim are poised to take their frenzied assault beyond Austin. As part of the plan, the group is releasing a free downloadable EP with the new website RCRD LBL, which has just doled out the second of the four songs. You can download them both here.

If you’ve caught any of their amazing shows this past year, or picked up a copy of their 7″ Let’s Talk About It, then you know what to expect. But of the two songs currently available from RCRD LBL, “World as a Waiting Room” and the new “Paint Silver Gold,” the trio maintains their calculated fury over bluesy riffs and more structured, though still gloriously disjointed, rhythms. They also add some piano into the mix with “Paint Silver Gold” that’s worth checking out.

Probably the hottest thing in Austin right now, White Denim are ridin’ high on the back of this summer’s Let’s Talk About It 7″ EP, an outstanding Fun Fun Fun Fest appearance, and a new tour EP. They’ve also put out a new video for the title track off of Let’s Talk About It.

Put together by Birds-On-Fire films, with Carlos LaRotta directing, and Trey Cartwright handling the shooting and editing, the video is about the most fun to be had with a Hearse. According to the filmmakers, “This is a narrative about soap and mud. We tried to make it look like an old 70’s movie because we are shit-house crazy like that.” Indeed.

White Denim’s debut EP, Let’s Talk About It, which is out on 7” vinyl, doesn’t simply unwind into a chaotic frenzy – it takes an unbounded entropy as it’s starting point. It’s like a house party gone horribly wrong, or perhaps gloriously right if it’s not your house. There is a moment half way through the second track, “Darksided Computer Mouth,” where amid the crashing din and slurring yells, the mic is offered up with “C’mere, you wanna sing?,” responded to with a shrill, falsetto chorus of voices pitching so far out of its range that dogs in other dimensions are howling in bewilderment. It’s wonderfully ridiculous. Anything seems to go here, and there is no approaching White Denim’s music without being swept into it – either you jump into the flood or simply stand wondering, “What the hell is going on over there!”

White Denim will release their debut EP Let’s Talk About It later this Spring, and unload along with it a fury of angular post-punk insanity. Digging into rugged garage grooves, stuttering out impressive vocal contortions and clanging on everything in sight, the trio turns to an unlikely din into a danceparty. It’s impossible to listen to “Shake Shake Shake” and not get caught up in the frenetic pulse, while songs like “Sitting” (on their myspace) mesmerize in their disjointed rhythms roped together into explosive, yet surprisingly coherent, bursts. You have two chances to revel in White Denim this week: Friday night at the Continental Club with fellow local standouts Loxly and the Glass Family, and then again on Saturday night at Emo’s Lounge with The Boxing Lesson, The Simple Pleasure, and Tsar Bomba. Be prepared to shake your ass.