White Denim are the band a stoned fourteen-year-old, who has just finished rummaging through his dad’s seven inches, dreams of joining. They’re delightfully adolescent in the best possible sense of the word: raucous and horny, they search for surface level pleasures, like a lothario passing a pair of nylon stockings from one hand to the other.
Stiff, their new album, keeps things basic yet cluttered; simple yet swollen. It’s a deliberately jumbled collection, a junkyard of copper wire choruses and rusted verses about love and lust. The gloriously titled Ha Ha Ha Ha (Yeah) stitches together soul, blues and rock, creating a slick amalgamation that reeks of bodily fluid. Its influences are held together with spit and sweat.
Though James Brown and The Rolling Stones provide the two most obvious touchstones, Stiff is a veritable roll call of classic ‘60s and ‘70s acts, with a song like Real Deal Momma invoking the likes of The Beatles, The Kinks, The Zombies, The Four Tops, and Tim Hardin all across a mere four minutes.
Nevertheless, though it has its gaze fixed firmly upon the past, Stiff never sounds like anything but the future. No one record has the right to be this much fun.
BY JOSEPH EARP
