Album: White Denim, 'D' (Downtown)

White Denim continue to expand in unexpected directions.

Since 2009's superb Fits, they've mutated from math-rock psychedelic blues-jammers to something closer to a cross between the Grateful Dead and the Magic Band, mingling spiky trickster rhythms with sleek country-rock harmonies and serpentine guitar breaks, with a side-order of Afro-Cuban jazz flute thrown in on "A River to Consider". As James Petralli sings on the closing "Keys", a jaunty blend of strings and country picking, "I got a number of keys/ No doors to unlock". That's very much the feeling throughout D, whether they're negotiating the skittery syncopated rhythms of the psych-jazz groove "Anvil Everything" or braiding skeins of pirouetting guitars and falsetto harmonies while segueing Dead-style between "Burnished" and "At The Farm". Is there nothing they can't do?

DOWNLOAD THIS It's Him; Burnished; At the Farm; Anvil Everything