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 in a 1940s Spartan trailer parked up in woodland outside the city. Petralli 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” under COVID, he plunged deep into the science of assembling tracks digitally, with contributions from players he’d sometimes never even meet. The results 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 was out of the window with even the idea of a band,” says Petralli. “On this record, there are many bands, sometimes in the room with me, sometimes miles away in a remote collaboration, and that process opened up a lot of possibility for me.” By way of example, he explains how he heard a track by Chicago’s Finom (aka Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham), then speculatively reached out to them, and soon had them voicing on ‘12’’s sun-kissed soul smash, ‘Swinging Door’.
“This is the first White Denim record where I’ve engineered and been the main producer,” he proudly states. “I’ve touched every sound that’s on there.”
If ‘12’ is the thrilling sound of Petralli vacating his low-tech comfort zone, it also documents a turbulent and sometimes painful period for his family. Back in Austin, he and his partner Elaine were caring for her father, who passed in spring ’21, and once they’d moved to LA, it fell to James to home-school his kids. His lyrics are his response to some of these “difficult things”, but refracted through the glass-half-full sunshine prism of Petralli’s worldview.
As ever, Petralli takes inspiration, if not specific techniques, from right across popular music’s history. For this project, Scritti Politti’s avant-pop masterpiece from 1985, ‘Cupid & Psyche’, was an influence for its densely detailed sonic texturing, but Petralli says he equally binged on YouTube clips of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Dennis Bovell dubbing it up on the fly. In terms of actual songwriting, James has been vibing on Nick Lowe, Jonathan Richman, Doug Sahm and Joe Jackson – “these guys who make very energetic, intentional music that’s sophisticated but also willing to have a good time.”
By opening up to different methods of composition and production on ‘12’, James Petralli has succeeded in rejuvenating WhiteDenim, while keeping continuity at its core.
