Southern band finds comfort on stage

Every concert is ultimately an experience-driven event. People might go to a concert to hear the music or to enjoy the venue, but the evening always boils down to the experience. True music lovers enter every concert with certain expectations, and Tuesday night’s White Denim show at the Troubadour was not a regular concert.

The band was already on stage not playing anything at all. Even stranger than that, no one — neither audience nor production team — even cared they were onstage. There were no cheers or drunken shouts of excitement to be heard; people seemed to be concentrating on their own conversations or on getting drinks from the bar.

Gradually the band began to play. They started out quietly, slowly developing the jam into a song. From that moment on, you could feel Denim’s yearning for jam bands. But even as the song began to climax, it was still easy to move closer to the stage. Concertgoers started to be more interested but not as one would expect at a concert. It was as if the Hollywood glamour had stagnated the Troubadour, and it was just another night on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Only around the third or fourth song in the set did people begin to seem genuinely captivated by the performance. At that point, the youthful charm of the Southern virtuosos began to warm the decidedly chilly audience. The blue scales and Southern accents were hypnotizing. The goofy-looking lead singer, the child-like bass player and the cool, scrappy drummer somehow managed to remind the audience not only why they paid to see White Denim but why they loved rock and roll.

Slowly, the band began to feel the love from the tough Hollywood crowd and became more comfortable with its stage presence in the process. White Denim’s classic rock stylings brought people together and ultimately unified them, illustrating through deed why some consider White Denim’s album to be one of the best of 2009.

As the night progressed, the band fell back on some of its catchier tunes like “I Start To Run” and “Mirrored and Reversed,” occasionally weaving in experimental numbers like “El Hard Attack DCWYW” and “Everybody Somebody.”

It’s hard to define White Denim’s musical inclination. It could definitely be said that the band’s head-banging riffs allude to garage rock in the same vein as The Black Keys, but you could also say the group’s songs flow seamlessly from one to the next and go a little bit over the top, like Phish, or pay homage to the psychedelic sounds of the Jimmy Hendrix Experience.

But two things remain constant in White Denim’s sound. One is its clear influence from the sounds of the ‘60s and ‘70s; the other is its virtuosity and comfort with its instruments, being playful and witty at the same time.  Denim is not afraid to improvise, which is key to a band that plays so much blues and soul.

Although the group truly connected with the audience toward the end, the glamour and coolness was too much for this Texan trio at the beginning of the set. Once Denim started to let loose and play their songs, however, they won over the crowd.

Without a doubt, the most exciting part of the night was when the band left the crowd wanting more. The call for an encore was very emotional. The band went to the green room, lit a cigarette and noticed that the audience was shouting and immediately put it out and went back on stage. The ensuing songs completely won everyone’s hearts and turned casual viewers and tagalongs into fans of this up-and-coming band. These three guys were so down-to-earth and accessible they oozed cool, and the fact that they are so talented and entertaining didn’t hurt.

It is clear that White Denim is talented, but it is easy to see that the group is relatively new to touring outside their habitual boundaries. During the show, the band impressed with their virtuosity and captivating blues solos with walls of sound reminiscent of My Bloody Valentines, but, at the end, it was the bands accessibility and friendliness that  won over fans.