A Shot In The Arm

Even as recently as a few years ago the prospect of young Texan noise merchants White Denim teaming up with Americana experimentalists Wilco and looking to them for studio guidance would have seemed far-fetched, bordering on preposterous. The two bands were for all intents and purposes from different musical worlds, a nexus between which seemed non-existent.

But time moves on, and some perceptions eventually prove redundant. For many years Wilco have been inching incrementally away from their alt-country origins – now peddling an expansive albeit classicist brand of rock'n'roll, still with a defiantly experimental bent – while White Denim have been moving the other way, their hazy mix of Southern-tinged indie and psych-rock getting more accessible with every release.

Thus a couple of years ago when Wilco asked White Denim to open for them on a US tour, the world didn't end. In fact, the gambit worked so well that Wilco frontman and mastermind Jeff Tweedy even lent his studio nous (and his actual studio) to White Denim for their sixth album, Corsicana Lemonade, producing two tracks himself and inspiring much of the rest. It's a record showcasing a band maturing whilst staying true to what made them special in the first place – essentially capturing the best of both worlds.

“To be honest, I think the overarching theme or sentiment was really like, 'Let's get in there and play together, with all of us in the same room, and see how that fleshes itself out',” guitarist Austin Jenkins recalls. “Everyone had done live takes of their instruments prior to [recording], but they'd all been separate, so really getting in there and working with the drums and the bass and vocals on a groove – to get it feeling really right on the groove – I guess that was the guiding principle. That frees you up in a really weird way – the limitations open up a lot more options. You focus so hard on trying to get that groove happening, that it starts sounding really full with just the four pieces and you don't feel the necessity to fill a lot of space in that kind of way.

“So I think everybody was pretty conscious of that, and I think that that mostly started in Tweedy's studio, The Loft, when we worked up there with him for those four days. He kind of had this ethos where if he couldn't picture the person playing the part he didn't really think it was necessary to the song, which was a really cool way to approach it. It was interesting, and I think we all adopted that when we all started working on the record.”

Even just being in Wilco's renowned Chicago studio, The Loft, would be enough to make most musicians green with envy.
“Shit man, it was insane,” Jenkins laughs of the experience. “First off, getting to go on tour with them and seeing how they play – seeing how they play from night to night – was inspiring. All of those guys are just like otherworldly players – they've all got it – and the cool thing is they work together so well that it's amazing to see them really come out and rip it up. It was cool.

“And then seeing where they do their work – like being in The Loft and seeing the space – they get in there and they play together, there's no tricks. That's the coolest thing about it – I think that space and how open the layout is, you just get in there and you play. You make music, I hate to say the traditional way, but that's what it is – you can see everyone, and you can hear them and there's air in between you and the sound, it's not just going straight to this screen or anything like that. It's like a real thing, and that was a really valuable experience, just getting to be around that.

“We talked [with Tweedy] a lot about prog and a lot of '70s rock, just because there's just a certain badarse attitude to that which is really fun to do when you're playing rock'n'roll. Having an electric guitar and drums and an electric bass and a vocalist like James [Petralli] who's got that ability to fucking really go there is awesome – when you're rocking you want to get into that space, and he was identifying some of those sounds. It's really fun rock music to make, and when we got in there and all playing together we were toying around with some rock ideas in that kind of vein. [Tweedy] has a really deep vocabulary.”

And, fortunately for White Denim fans hanging to see them play on their first ever Australian sojourn, the tracks from Corsicana Lemonade are transferring well to the live realm.

“It's been a real blast live, man,” Jenkins enthuses. “It's still early days in terms of us playing the material – we've been playing it for a while, but really playing it onstage every night kind of transforms it in a way. It's good being able to deconstruct a couple of parts or just tie sections together, it gives some songs a different feel that they have on the record, and it inspires you to go back and evaluate what you did and learn from it – make it better. Sometimes I think, 'Well shit, I probably should have played this on the record instead of what I'm playing on there', but it's been really fun – these tunes are pretty cool to play live because they've got a different kind of energy or something, so it's exciting.”