Into:Music Gig of the week:
White Denim and B C Camplight @ SWG3 Galvanizers, Sunday 17th February 2019
Austin bluesy-soul rockers, ‘White Denim’, are playing with exciting multi-instrumentalist, BC Camplight in support, on the current leg of their UK tour.
This gig has a double header feel as White Denim were the gnarly garage rockers with a wild streak exciting indie music fans at the start of the last decade, whereas B C Camplight is the new sound on the indie scene.
White Denim are now on their seventh record, which is a return to their loud rock n roll roots. Just when we had forgotten about them they were back on websites and radio stations last year, sounding as fresh as ever. In their review of the album ‘Pitchfork’ put the renewed excitement about the band down to ‘real music nostalgia’ – rock n’ roll fun seems to be gaining credence (no pun intended!) again – it never takes long to come back again!
2018 album, Performance (out on City Slang) is akin to The Black Keys in it’s stripped down take on classic 60’s and 70’s rock music, with slight nods to psych and some dirty synths thrown in! It will sound great live!
B C Camplight was one of the darlings of the indie music scene last year with his inspired fourth album Deportation Blues, which tells the story of Brian ‘BC’ Cristianzo’s move to his musical spiritual home of Manchester, from his native New Jersey, to recover from addiction and depression. He found kindred spirits in the rainy city and made his third and breakthrough album How to Die in the North there, released by Bella Union in 2015. He was then deported after complications with his visa and a whole tour and string of festival and television appearances were cancelled.
Brian managed to return to his beloved Manchester after over a year of heartache and legal wranglings and made the redemptive Deportation Blues with Bella Union in 2018. The album, although adored by a small cult of fans (the DJ Marc Riley chief among them) is still under-rated despite it’s abundant creativity and genre-busting compositions – combining synth-pop, piano jazz and full pelt indie-rock, which comes from a place of sorrow and pain, but which you can dance to!
This gig is a great chance to see a baton being passed, with the support act being the scrappy upstart who will be the more talked about act over the coming years.
White Denim are so proficient at providing value-for-money, sexy riffage and mayhem that it’ll be a night of cathartic abandon, in one of the best venues Glasgow has to offer right now!
Go let rock n’ roll redeem you – it works!
Cara Govan