Album Review: 12 by White Denim

Although White Denim's music has always exhibited degrees of glass-half-full philosophy, 12 is a remarkably sunny album, almost as if palm trees, eternal sunshine, beaches and other stereotypical signifiers of bandleader and creative director (and sole constant in an ever-shifting line-up) James Petralli's current base in Los Angeles have somehow seeped their way on to the grooves of this record. There's real depth here too. Shaped by the inevitably stressful, if not downright existential challenges that the covid pandemic provided for working musicians, the (of course) twelve tracks on 12 aren't afraid to dig deep and tackle the heavy stuff head-on, but the occasional ruminative introspection is clad in some of the band's most warm, caressing and instantly hooky melodies ever.

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White Denim is one of those bands that fall into the rarest of categories, they're reliably excellent from album to album. It's the curse of such groups to often flow on by, never causing a ruckus by dropping some absolute clunker or zeitgeist-altering release. Pleasing ears since 2008, the James Petralli-led group has gone through many lineup changes in the intervening years, adding elements of soul, funk, and even jazz to the band's brand of southern rock as they've gone on.

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