White Denim cooks up a simmering melting pot of rock stylings with 13, and luckily for us, the results are delicious.
Release date: April 24, 2026 | Bella Union | Bandcamp | Instagram
It’s a funny thing: for all the doomy proclamations being made that rock & roll is dead, I keep seeing bands doing a great job of disproving that notion. Sure, maybe the genre’s retreated slightly from center stage, but a little bit of digging will easily turn up any number of groups comfortably writing great music within that old rock & roll niche. It may be decades on from when Huey Lewis & the News promised us that ‘the heart of rock & roll is still beating‘, but it remains the truth. Bands like White Denim have seen to that.
My own first exposure to Austin’s White Denim came several years ago by way of a live set broadcast on Philly’s legendary XPN. I was pretty taken with their cool live sound and dug through several great albums of theirs at the time, but shifting tastes sidelined them for me over the years. Upon seeing 13 arrive on our review list, I remembered enjoying them and felt I should dive back in. Have to make up for lost time, right?
It didn’t take long to figure out that White Denim still hits just as well as they used to, or perhaps even better. Now to be clear, White Denim is ostensibly an indie rock band, but that descriptor doesn’t quite do justice to the breadth of their approach. Across the thirteen tracks that make up 13, White Denim deploys a constant revolving door of approaches, influences and instrumentation that keeps the album feeling fresh in every moment, if a smidge disjointed at times. The rock root is always there, but White Denim weaponizes everything from Southern rock and country to synth pop, funk, and soul. The results, remarkably, are universally fun and engaging.
From the Frank Zappa-esque winding progressions of opener “(God Created) Lock and Key” to the tail of the more plaintive soulfulness of “Drive Trucks”, 13 never stays in one place for too long. The constant renewal felt in transitions like the Southern-fried psych of “Chew Nails” into the synthy, jazzy flow of “Only a Fool” (a personal album favorite of mine) or the way the yachty “Crossfyre” giving way to the Motown-tinged “Keep Calling Me (Baby)” is all but guaranteed to keep listeners engaged and on their toes. At first listen, it can even turn into a fun game of wondering where the band will go next, and odds are good that they’ll surprise you every time.
Given, that variety can also prove to be one of the few faults I’d imagine one taking with the album. The shifts can occasionally border on jarring, most notably in the cycle of “Earth To”, “That’s Rap”, and “Hired Hand #2”. The former is a wash of delirious, slow-paced psychedelia, while the center track leans totally into groovy funk and even indulges in a little bit of the titular rap. But that song leading into the sheer honky-tonk fun of “Hired Hand #2” does feel like a little bit of a reach. Not enough to derail the album, and every one of those songs is a delight, but it does do some damage to 13‘s cohesiveness as an album.
That minor quibble aside, White Denim does nail every style they attempt across 13 in my own humble opinion. The subtle acoustics and quiet flute that underpin “Time Time” make for a wonderfully smooth listen, while the positively rocking “Ruby” is easily one of the highlights and most effective earworms White Denim deploys here. The horns that pump up “Matchbook Baby”, the strings and piano of “Quiet Moment” (not to mention that cool, amorphous coda), anywhere White Denim takes us across 13 is handled deftly and with genuine care for the craft.
That care for craft even extends to the complete absence of the sort of rock & roll showboating that sinks other modern rock bands. Every note across 13 (besides the looser interludes) feels perfectly placed and thought out. Solos are virtually absent beyond a brief saxophone lead in “Earth To”, and even that remains quiet in the mix. Bandleader James Petralli’s vocals are always on point, whether leaning into soulful gusto or keeping calm, but they never steal attention from the song proper. Every element down to the production favors the song over everything, and even if the songs can feel a bit disparate at times, every one of them is honed to a bright gleam that won’t dim across multiple listens.
Sometimes, you just need to throw on some good rock & roll, and White Denim has handily delivered my favorite rock of 2026 so far with 13. It’s the kind of album that has a little bit of something for rockers of all stripes. Jamming, prog, Southern rock, it’s all here and then some. 13 is some of the most fun I’ve had this year with any album, and given the White Denim managed this on the well-trodden paths of rock & roll (and thirteen albums into their career), I feel like that’s something worth celebrating.
