Sputnikmusic - White Denim

Friday, April 29, 2016

Artist: White Denim

Track: “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”

This will certainly be the last time I post a song that is usually associated with legendary saxophonist and noted punchline Kenny Rogers (who didn’t write it – that would be country-pop songwriter/trivia question Mickey Newbury), but “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” is such a late ’60s anachronism – a sexy, dirty acid-rock ditty that failed miserably in its anti-drug warning by making it sound too damn cool – that I couldn’t ignore its most recent incarnation. Austin blues-rock group White Denim funk up the proceedings here considerably, lathering on a thick coat of sleaze to go with that irresistibly bouncy melody and swooning lyrics. Recorded for the season two soundtrack of FX’s superb Fargo, which was released just last month, it fits that show’s (and the scene it’s expertly placed in) aesthetic smoothly, capturing the cracking facade of a country hollowed out by the toll of the Vietnam War and painted over with a mindless groove and lyrics that convey control starting to slip inexorably away.

It’s well within the wheelhouse for White Denim, who have graduated from their origins as a ramshackle garage rock group with a penchant for face melting live performances to psychedelic rock veterans with a penchant for face melting live performances. Stiff, their seventh, heavily soul-influenced LP, was released earlier this…

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So 2011 was a lot of fun.

25. Youth Lagoon – Year of Hibernation

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Trevor Powers’ music makes me feel a lot of things I just can’t put my finger on. When I first heard it, the walls of reverb and slow burning melodies seemed tailor-made to lull me to sleep. Like the best dream-pop records, though, it kept bringing me back, searching for the power in these seemingly nonchalant, mumbled lyrics and those chords that surge upwards, eternally hopeful. It’s more of a feeling than anything I can write down, though, the kind of satisfaction you get from waking up from a really good dream that you just can’t remember the details of. Dream music, that sounds about right.

24. White Denim – D

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If this is what jam bands do nowadays, I need to start growing my mustache out and cultivate a stash of patchouli, because this is the kind of 21^st-century music that you air-guitar along to. I don’t know what front man James Petralli is mumbling on about half the time, but that’s hardly the point – when they’re infusing psychedelic rock with prog and jazz and a healthy dose of innovative looping techniques, you’ll be plenty focused on just trying to keep up.

23. Bibio – Mind Bokeh

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Posts Tagged ‘White Denim’

29 April 2016: White Denim