Strange to think that, when the first UK White Denim single turned up, they seemed to be more or less like a garage rock band. I was just re-reading my blog on their UK debut, “Workout Holiday”, and was amused to see some discussion in the comments about their relationship or otherwise with The Hives. Not much chance of that happening nowadays, especially with “D”.
Since I saw them play a series of shows at the Union Chapel in Highbury a good decade ago, I’ve always felt that Low’s music suited churches. Not because of the religious connotations as such, more because they were so suited to the space, stillness and reverberations inherent in those kind of buildings.
The first show by James Blackshaw with additional musicians begins a little oddly. A man plays a brief tuba solo, then settles down to some concerted texting on his phone. It turns out that this is a false start, however. The James Blackshaw Ensemble might contain a cellist, two violin players and a flautist, but the tuba player – warming up, it transpires – is here to accompany the support act, guitarist/pianist Tom James Scott, through a series of hushed, minimal pieces.
It begins looking more or less, as Jack White has argued ad nauseam, like a democracy. White, Brendan Benson and Little Jack Lawrence are clustered around Patrick Keeler’s drum riser, smartly waistcoated, backs to the audience, flexing their metaphorical rock muscles. They’re playing the title track from “Consolers Of The Lonely”, and the way the song switches back and forth between White and Benson, the way their vocals are tracked by harmonies from Lawrence and Mark Watrous, the new keyboards and fiddle player, the power-packed tightness of it all is overwhelming.
If the internet is to be trusted, the guitarist Peter Walker has not played a gig in the UK since 1962. In the interim, he has befriended Karen Dalton, Sandy Bull and Janis Joplin, provided instrumental accompaniment for Dr Timothy Leary’s early LSD experiments, learned the art of raga from Ravi Shankar in the same class as George Harrison, and spent nearly four decades in a truck in Woodstock, chiefly practising flamenco guitar.
As I write, I’m listening to the second disc of “In Rainbows” for, I think, the third time. First impressions, then. The eight tracks shouldn’t be considered as offcuts, as inferior cousins of the songs that made it onto the first set; in fact, I’ve a hunch that some Radiohead fans might actually prefer some of the songs here.
