With their denim jackets, mismatching headgear and facial hair, Texan rockers White Denim look like they’ve just rocked up to a 1975 episode of The Old Grey Whistle Test, and at times sound like it as well. Their sensibility seems to hail from a pre-punk era where musicianship is king, and their noodling workouts are met with regular audience yells of “Ow!” The difference is that they play with the fire of a garage-rock band, and seemingly disparate elements of 1960s pop and 70s rock are hurled together with the visible glee that has sustained them for a decade.
Chugging grooves nestle alongside psychedelic folk and walls of guitar dissonance. They don’t have the postmodern sheen and chart-hugging nous of the Black Keys, which is presumably why they’re selling out small venues rather than big ones, but they are rawer and more earthy.
Frontman James Petralli’s interlocking guitar runs with new guitarist Jonathan Home beautifully echo both Television’s revered Marquee Moon and the days when young people in flares would lie back and inhale to the sound of the Allman Brothers Band’s Jessica.
After the more pop-oriented Corsica Lemonade in 2013, and the subsequent departure of founder drummer Joshua Block and longtime guitarist Austin Jenkins, songs from the forthcoming album Stiff feature a higher-than-usual dollop of soul. The balmy, falsetto-caressed Thank You is particularly sublime. However, with the new lineup concentrating on each other’s playing, there isn’t much by way of audience engagement. At least Petralli’s gurning during solos is entertaining, particularly the screwed-up face that makes him resemble Jack Nicholson in The Shining. After the storming, driving boogie of At Night in Dreams, he finally manages to say: “Thanks for coming.” Someone instantly fires back: “No, thank you.”
• At Islington Assembly Hall, London, on 16 February. Box office: 020-7527 8900.
