Album Review : White Denim - Fits
- Written by Peter Harris
Imagine if you will, a Huey chopper swooping across the paddy fields of Vietnam. The gunner is firing off random warning shots and the grunts wait with edgy patience to get out there and find their friend, Charlie.
Taped to the back of the seats is a ghetto blaster and it's pumping out, at machine-gun-fire-masking volume, White Denim's 'Say What You Want'. A 2009 track played in 1968 which sounds absolutely the real deal. This is due to the fact that White Denim are time travellers; not happy with merely producing retro rock, they have gone one step further and travelled back in time in an attempt to sound as genuine and convincing as possible. You have to give them credit for their effort but more importantly, you have to give them credit for their music because it's superb.
Fits is an album of two halves, neatly split by the half time oranges of instrumental 'Sex Prayer'. The first half is played at a quicker pace and is full of funksome bass lines, Hendrix-style howling guitars and production au natural. The second half calms things down with some more straight forward song construction and full on melody.
The opening trio of tracks 'Radio Milk How Can You Stand It', 'All Consolations' and the aforementioned 'Say What You Want' set an impressive stall for Fits. They'll be like nothing you've heard for a long time if you're in your 50s and quite possibly ever if you're a wee pip squeak. Everything feels so loose and unhindered by external processes. Production makes the album sound like a band, playing in a room, being recorded by a microphone and I'd be surprised if this basically wasn't the case. You can hear occasional amp hum and the drums pound in your head as if they've been miniaturised and inserted in your ear. It's a crisp sound but more like a hand cooked crisp than a mass-manufactured Pringle.
'All Consolations' with its ethereal cave echoes is an undoubted highlighted. It sounds a tad like very early My Morning Jacket but somehow more real, more heartfelt. 'I Start To Run' is the kind of thing that should only be played in secret love shacks in the deepest parts of the Louisiana swamps. You can almost taste the moonshine.
Into the second half and things do slow down noticeably but not to the detriment of the quality or even the pacing. This is the come down after the party, the moonshine hangover remedy. And the party is brought to a beautiful close with 'Syncn'; a delicate garnish to a remarkable banquet of styles and sounds.