The Sounding Board: White Denim packs everything but a partridge in a pear tree into the chaotic and charming 12

Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.

Launching a column focused on new music during the holiday-imposed doldrums isn’t the worst choice I’ve ever made. Honestly, it’s not even close to the top five.¹

But it does mean that this week’s search for a column subject was touched by the sort of desperation familiar to any inveterate last-minute shopper. However, unlike the folks who ransack the corner store’s toy shelf on Christmas Eve, I found something good and seasonally appropriate to fill my need. Well, as long as  you’re willing to entertain the idea of dreaming of a White Denim Christmas.²

12, the latest studio album³ from White Denim, an always pretty good and often mildly experimental⁴ indie rock band from Austin, Texas, is a collection of a dozen songs built on a foundation of roots rock and accented by Mothers of Invention-esque percussion, jazzy flourishes, and wacky sounds, including what sounds for all the world like a squeaky dog toy. 

All of the above are present on album-opener, “Light On,” which was also 12’s lead single, and the first track written for 12.⁵ The track opens with orchestral squonks and snippets of tunes played in reverse. It’s driven forward by a marimba-tinged rhythm section that sets the table for singer-songwriter-mastermind James Petralli’s smooth vocals.⁶ If that sounds like a lot, yes it absolutely is. But the buzzy blend of busy beats and bourbon-touched vocals works well.

That stays true throughout the album. 

While 12 is bursting at the seams with oddball sounds,  time signature detours and featured artists,⁷  it never collapses under the weight of its own maximalism.⁸ That’s a feat because blending disparate sounds is difficult to do while avoiding cacophony. Petralli evidently has great instincts, or a judicious ear in post.

12′s functionality is also a testament to how good the band is at executing the warm-n-twangy part of the equation, too. There’s no other way a song like “Swinging Door,” could wind up sounding massive, powerful and a little catchy, instead of loud and chaotic. 12 is never easy listening, but it goes down smoother than it should. 

Ultimately, 12 seems unlikely to be a significant commercial success or assessed as a late-career critical classic, but it’s tough to imagine any other late-year listen offering the same blend of heady virtues. And if a “the more the merrier” approach to melody and instrumentation, sounds like a good time to you, then Christmas came early. 

1. Five extremely questionable choices in no particular order: lifelong fandom of Chicago sports teams, front-hair spikes like a human skate ramp in the ‘00s, spending extended time in South Carolina, almost a decade of continually playing “Pokémon Go” and getting into print media in the ‘10s ↩︎
2. Or pining for the 12 days of Christmas I guess, ↩︎
3. Fittingly, it’s White Denim’s 12th LP. Some live releases and collaborations muddy the water, but I’m trusting the band’s count. ↩︎
4. White Denim’s first album came out in 2008. At the time, I thought of them as a part of a wave of blog-approved rock revival bands like their fellow Texans Voxtrot. A contemporaneous NME review shows that even early White Denim’s sound had surprising dimension. ↩︎
5. Petralli via White Denim’s website, “‘Light On’ is the first song I wrote for this new collection. It mostly took its shape while I played my son’s guitar, both of us crammed onto his twin mattress with my partner reading for all of us from my daughter’s bed on the other side of the room. It is as influenced by Shel Silverstein as Elvin Jones. Over the years I spent creating this work this particular song served as an encouragement and a consistent reminder to focus on the positive and to continue creating with little regard for potential outcomes.” ↩︎
6. Petralli engineered 12, and was its main producer. While Petralli was the driving force behind the album, it’s far from a solo project, and bandmembers from White Denim’s earliest days had a hand in making 12.. The Austin Chronicle has much more detail. ↩︎
7. Tameca Jones and Jessie Payor on “Look Good,” Finom on “Swinging Door”; Eric Slick & Jared Samuel on “Hand Out Giving.” ↩︎
8. Possibly because the longest song on the album, “Hand Out Giving,” is a relatively lean 4 minutes and 28 seconds long. ↩︎