13 by White Denim–Album Review
13 by White Denim–Album Review
Sometimes you put on a new record, and it doesn’t so much greet you as pull you in— like stepping into someone else’s living room mid-conversation. That’s the feeling of 13, the latest album from White Denim. It’s a record built on connections to family, collaborators, and the band’s history; but it’s just as much about the friction that comes with all of that. The result is a genre-blurring, groove-heavy set of songs that feels both deeply personal and sonically restless.
The album’s opening single “(God Created) Lock and Key” makes that clear right away. It’s a twitchy, shape-shifting funk-blues track that refuses to sit still. What begins as a sly, almost humorous bit of self-mythology quickly spirals into something darker and more visceral. The song expands and contracts, stuttering forward before collapsing in on itself, channeling the jagged experimentalism of Captain Beefheart with guitar licks that would make Zoot Horn Rollo proud. It’s less an introduction than a statement of intent: this album is going to move where it wants.
Charlie Weinmann
Midway through, “Ruby” shifts the album’s energy in a subtle way. There’s a hazy, déjà vu quality to it, like a melody you swear you’ve heard before but can’t quite place. Drawing on the warped, lo-fi textures of old cassette recordings and echoing the grit of the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” the track feels intentionally worn-in, like it’s been sitting in the sun for years. But it never comes across as simple throwback worship. Instead, it captures that sweet spot between past and present, where familiar sounds are reshaped into something loose and lived in.
Trying to pin down 13 to a single sound is a losing game. Across the record, James Petralli pulls from a wide spectrum of genres and folds them together in ways that feel instinctive rather than calculated. One moment you’re locked into a deep, rubbery groove; the next, the song opens up into something airy and bright. That push and pull gives the album its momentum, even as it detours into stranger territory.
Charlie Weinmann
Lyrically, there’s a weight here that anchors all that movement. Themes of power, generational trauma, shame, and survival surface throughout, but they’re balanced by an equally strong sense of gratitude for music, for community, and for the ability to keep creating. You get the sense that these songs were shaped in solitude but meant to be shared, each one reaching out even when it’s wrestling with something internal.
It may not wrap you in a blanket the way some records do but, in time, it becomes something just as immersive: a comfortable but unpredictable space that rewards you the longer you stay inside it.
13 releases on April 24th.
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