White Denim vocalist James Petralli teamed up with guitarist and songwriter Raze Regal for a new album, Raze Regal & White Denim Inc, due out on November 11. The collaborators previewed the record with the track, “Dislocation.”
While James and Raze met during a 2019 White Denim West Coast tour when Raze was playing with “a fantastic outfit from the Bay Area called The Once and Future Band,” as per White Denim’s Substack, the two musicians formed a close bond during the pandemic as Raze moved to White Denim’s hometown of Austin, Texas in 2020. It was a difficult time for both artists as the pandemic sidelined live music and also as a long term relationship ended for Raze along with the dissolution of his previous band back in Oakland, California.
“James and I were talking, and he was like, ‘Come up to Austin!’ and I was like, ‘Maybe I should,” Raze recalled of the transitional period. “We would just kind of hang out in those early days, and then I started writing these tunes, and I started presenting them to James. They were just sketches of ideas I had, and he was like, ‘You know these are really good. What if we worked on these together?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely.’”
James also recalled the difficult but fruitful time:
“The week Raze arrived in Austin he joined my family/creative bubble, and we began writing and cutting music together. Through these initial sessions I learned that Raze possesses a unique gift as a lyricist and songwriter as well as a striking and colourful chord vocabulary. He naturally led these writing sessions and I supported him as an editor, instrumentalist, and engineer. We quickly developed an easy flow together in the studio. Which was refreshing for both of us. These were particularly hard times: Raze and I became close friends and helped each other get to the other side.”
The duo cemented their bond through their eclectic musical tastes, with James praising Raze’s deep knowledge of music as well as film.
“Raze has encyclopaedic knowledge of modern music and is an avid collector,” James said. “I thought I was a pretty voracious consumer of music but compared to Raze I’m still scratching the surface. Dude has heard every record and seen every film. Throughout the pandemic I would teach my kids during the day and on at least a couple nights a week get schooled by Regal in front of the turntable at the studio.”
The duo’s modern interpretations of eclectic retro sounds is evident on lead single “Dislocation.” A statement on the duo’s Bandcamp described the song as “right at home blasting out on a 1973 Trans Am, yet never slides into pastiche. Its knowledge of the past is full-bodied, but Raze and James’ command of the present keeps it feeling of-the-now.”
Watch the music video for “Dislocation” below:
