Texan band, White Denim, are one of the most original around.
They cram more joy and sheer excitement at being let loose in a studio into their three or four minute explosions of noise that are probably most accurately described as exhuberant garage punk than practically anyone else currently recording.
That alone would be special enough. But it’s actually not White Denim’s real party trick.
What really sets White Denim apart is their uncanny ability to be able to do all the above whilst also uncannily being able to locate the thing that seems to make other, apparently unrelated, genres tick. Or shine like a beautiful star actually. Surgically extract it. While leaving the other 99%, that is irrelevant padding, behind. And then, miraculously, embed it into their garage punk songs as if it was the most natural thing ever.
Which not only makes White Denim’s garage punk sound even fresher and more urgent than you first thought. But can also provoke even the most devoted and knowledgeable fan of the incoming genre to go back to the original source material and listen again with fresh, and refreshed, ears.
So when you listen to the remarkable ‘Mess Your Hair Up’ you can not only begin to believe that the spiritual heirs to fellow Texans, the 13th Floor Elevators (see ABON 0125), or even prime-time, garage-punk-era, MC5 (ABON 0185), have finally arrived. You can also, when the track transforms as if by magic into the repetitious drum-led, Motorik-beat, middle section, feel an uncontrollable urge to dust down and play, non-stop, in its entirety, the complete back catalogue of the inventors of the genre, the wonderful but not as famous as they should be, 70s Krautrockers, Neu!
The original version was recorded and released in 2007 and is almost impossible to source nowadays. This re-recorded version comes from the band’s first, ‘major label’, album, recorded and released in 2008.
Available on the absolutely essential album, ‘Workout Holiday’: Amazon
Never heard of these guys but they’re great. Happy, hard-hitting, hair-messing indeed.
Remarkably rich, deep soundscape – unusual to find within a genre that normally favours tinny shallows for alleged “cut through”