Much vaunted Austin, Texan rockers White Denim have often been too eclectic and flashy for my tastes, and I've never really listened to them at great length, even though I've been aware of them and their reputation. Perhaps for this reason, I barely noticed the release of their latest album World as a Waiting Room, which dropped a couple of months ago, and I'm only really catching up now.
I've given it a couple of listens now and I kind of like it. I'd probably slot it and the band into a category with two other contemporary West Coast Institutions Ty Segall and Oh Sees. Impeccable musicianship, covering a lot of ground, but often easier to admire than to love.
Because, boy do White Denim cover a lot of ground on World as a Waiting Room. Recorded earlier on this year, in a 30 days stretch at the start of Lockdown ,it seems to want to cram as many of the dubious pleasures of the first five years of the Seventies onto one album as it possibly can.
So you're getting T.Rex, Todd, King Crimson, Bowie, ELP, Sparks, Yes and that's all just for starters. A couple of times they also reminded me momentarily of The Stranglers and Joy Division too, which shows they're no completely allergic to the late Seventies either. But this is definitely, definitely not Punk.
It all might strike the casual listener as a quite inadvisable melange of Prog, Glam and mid to Heavy Rock that really shouldn't work. But actually it does. They even come up with one of my very favourite songs of the year too in Queen of the Quarantine which sounds like Robert Fripp or Tom Verlaine guesting on a mid-Seventies Bowie record. Quite gorgeous.
Elsewhere, DVD sounds like a shotgun marriage between Aeosmith's Toys In The Attic and Sonic Youth's Silver Rocket. There are some very odd things happening here sonically speaking. I kept actually telling myself that I should really be hating it but somehow it kept charming me back.
I enjoyed it, more I'd have to say than some of the more recent offerings from Ty and Oh Sees. While World as a Waiting Room is essentially showing off, and it's always showing off, it's highly enjoyable at the same time and it never once hurt my ears.
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