White Denim
Electric Ballroom, London
01/09/2011

Sandwiched between a stretch of UK festival dates, this full-to-heaving show is by far Texan stoner rock foursome White Denim’s biggest London gig to date, and although at times they challenge their capacity audience, and even for a few moments completely baffle them, they leave people ultimately enraptured.

Given their penchant for non-stop, one-into-another setlists, and the frantic pace at which much of the songs from second album ‘D’ switch mood and/or time signature, you really can’t blame the audience for seeming a little dazed and bewildered at times. It’s only when White Denim leave the stage that the crowd truly goes bananas – and when they return briefly to play the album’s soft, reflective (and way more simple) title-track, the deal’s totally sealed.

It’s also why the relatively steady, head nodding hick-funk of ’Down At The Farm’ is a clear mid set highlight too. Even referencing such terminably un-trendy names as Jethro Tull, The Doors or Thin Lizzy can be redeemed, it seems, if you do it with a burning sense of breakneck funkiness alongside your evidently considerable virtuosity. In keeping with that, although singer/guitarist James Petralli has got a good thing going on with his Thom Yorke meets Jack White vocals, the real star here is drummer Joshua Block. Hoisted high above the rest of the band on his riser with them taking their cues from him, it feels like they’re his backing band, as he deftly batters his kit mercilessly.

The tag ‘prog blues’ might sound like a musical car crash in waiting – who mentioned The Dead Weather? – and while it’s probably the neatest summary of what is essentially a sleazier, more toasted reinvention of blues and free-form jazz, it doesn’t do justice to the liveliness and musical frivolity of the White Denim sound at its best.

Ben Willmott