Put a Dime in Your Pocket, Relax
Hailing from Austin, White Denim have a tough time fitting into one genre. The foursome have the versatility to contain elements of prog-rock, Southern rock, jazz, blues and psychedelic rock into their songs. For their sixth studio album, produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, White Denim steer closest to Southern rock during the ten tracks on Corsicana Lemonade.
Opener “At Night in Dreams” begins with Austin Jenkins, who only joined in 2010 after four years of the band being a threesome, shredding on guitar with some help from vocalist James Petralli, whose voice is smooth and steady, with only a slight rasp here and there if he gets real loud.
Follow-up title track “Corsicana Lemonade” softens up a bit, but keeps pace. The guitars and Joshua Block on drums are both incredibly concise. The guitars still haven’t gone away for more than a beat at this point, and that’s how it remains throughout the course of the album. Jenkins’ presence is always there, all the way until tracks “Pretty Green” and “Cheer Up / Blues Ending” (which has a great hook) appear at the end of the album, with tasty guitar solos on both of them. And on the instrumental final track “A Place To Start,” Jenkins’ guitar is the last thing you hear.
Whatever kind of rock it is that White Denim create, it sounds good and it feels good. Corsicana Lemonade might not contain any award-winning legacy gems, but it’s a good album no less. White Denim don’t have much to prove to anyone, so it seems, while the album is well-produced and detail-oriented, they’ve taken some of their own advice given on “Cheer Up / Blues Ending”: Put a dime in your pocket, relax.
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