White Denim - Fits

White Denim
Fits
(2009, Full Time Hobby)
RIYL = Tolchock Trio, Portugal. The Man, Tapes n’ Tapes

White Denim have made haste and quickly followed up their massively enjoyable debut with their sophmore effort, Fits. Not a whole heap has changed since last year, but that isn't a bad thing. On Fits what we have is another series of bombastic rock n’ roll gems that are as fun as they are energetic. I’m tempted to just cut it off right there. What else is there to know? I think White Denim suffers from some abnormally high levels of adoration in different pockets of the world wide web (I’m looking at you GvB) which has caused a bit of backlash from lotsa people who might really enjoy the bands frantic, glorious rock chops. But I suppose that is nothing terribly new. Seems like you can’t say a single nice word about a band without the hype police coming to town to rain on the parade (if a single nice word can be considered a parade). Oh well, it’s at the loss of those who love to hate, because I love White Denim and I don’t even live in Texas! And I don’t even particularly like Texas. As far as states go, Texas is pretty low on my list (this may have been influenced by a poor experience at Six Flags in Houston). But whatever side of Texas that inspires the raucous, retro-inspired-but-still-modern-feeling rock that is White Denim, I’m all for it. I may have mentioned this when I wrote up Workout Holiday, but I saw White Denim open for Tapes n' Tapes and it was one of the most fantastic rock sets I’ve ever witnessed. There was absolutely nothing I could do to keep myself from nodding my head ridiculously to their aural onslaught. It was embarrassing, but in the best way. Tapes n’ Tapes on the other hand…well, I better not get into that again. Fits took me a little longer to really grasp than Workout Holiday did. It definitely doesn’t have all of the powerful hooks that were on their debut, but that doesn’t make it any less muscular and resilient. It kind of feels the way At Mount Zoomer feels to Apologies to the Queen Mary, if you can follow that line of thinking. Both great, but a little bit different in terms of accessibility. Not too much, just a little. Well, I’ll stop belaboring this. I love these guys for what they add to indie rock. There isn’t very many bands of this caliber perusing this type of music and am grateful that I have Fits to fill the gap.

-Thistle