Top Ten Albums 2010:

4. White Denim – Last Day of Summer

White Denim is naturally a polarizing band, and because of that, many people will question why I included their mismashed collection of 2010 demos in my top ten list. And OMG, IN THE TOP FIVE? WTF?

Well, haters gonna hate…but, you’re seriously out of your mind if you can’t find joy in listening to White Denim’s latest release, Last Day of Summer. Put out for free on their website on the actual last day of summer, this record explores the inner-most depths of the band during their “Fits” period, a span of time that moved the band from the loud, spontaneous, and wah pedal-driven sound of their first few recordings to a more reserved, temperamental, subtle, and jazz-influenced state.

The texture of Last Day of Summer comes closer to watercolor than anything else, giving the listener little (seemingly) unintended bleeds between grooves, assisted by ungodly amounts of reverb on the vocals and drums.  Everytime you get confused about some shade that seems out of place, you are greeted with the revelation that if you were lead into purple with blue, red is always somewhere close by. If each of these tunes are vaguely mathematical equations, the solutions are best understood in inversions. My favorite kind of art:

Art through the back door.

Nowhere is this synesthesiastic experience of color and numbers more clear than on tracks like Shy Billy, Light Light Light, and Tony Fatti. Shy Billy is one of my top three favorite songs of the entire year because of the natural force behind the build that supports the entire song structure. Its repetitive and powerful, pushing my heart up in my throat every time just like Regina Holding Hands did for me last year off “Fits.”  Light Light Light could be considered an instrumental track, despite the repetition of the title word through the song’s introduction, and although it is one of the softest songs in the collection (something that seems like new fertile ground for White Denim), it is remarkably able to capture a feeling of resolution without feeling cheesy.

This album is just nice. It feels good, it listens easy, it flows well, and it honestly doesn’t feel like what I know it is, a compilation of loose ideas before the creation of a new record (which I hear sounds little like this material). All of this makes me want to savor this collection, hold on to it for its simplicity and its earnestness.

And most importantly, I can’t wait to make more sense of it next summer.