Forced into a rethink during the pandemic from his favoured jamming-it-out-in-the-studio process of creation, James Petralli reformulates White Denim on their twelfth studio album. Functionally titled “12”, it’s arguably the least spontaneous and most obviously ‘planned’ White Denim album, yet it’s of a piece with the band’s scuzzy, off-the-cuff garage/psych rock explorations of the past.
The songs on ’12’ are intricate, hi-tech and forward-facing, yet also somehow still of a piece with the questing ambition, rootsy swing and uplifting way with melody we’ve come to adore about Petralli’s music. It’s always been hard to keep pace with James Petralli’s group, ever since they first exploded out of Austin, Texas in ’08 with hyper-kinetic post-punk bangers like “Shake Shake Shake” and “I Start To Run“. There was delicious romance in the original trio’s MO, as they hatched intrepid sounds together via lengthy jams in a 1940s Spartan trailer parked up in woodland outside the city. James duly raced on through shifting line-ups and kaleidoscopic shades of soul, jazz and Southern rock, always with a feel of in-the-moment authenticity.
As for so many musicians, the pandemic forced Petralli into a radical rethink in both life and creative process. Going into White Denim’s twelfth long- player, he relocated his family to Los Angeles, and, barred from the usual workouts “on the floor” with his latest group members under COVID, he plunged deep into the science of assembling tracks digitally, with contributions from players he’d sometimes never even meet.
The Fat Angel Sings 