Name: Misfit's Jubilee
Brand: Jim White

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

VJLP259

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: Yes

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2020-10-30

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

The Orchard

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

5029423025914

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Jim White

Genre GB

Country / Americana

Label GB

Loose Music

Jim White (born 1962) is an Australian drummer, songwriter, and producer from Melbourne, Australia. He has been involved in various musical projects throughout his career, including Happy Orphans with Conway Savage and People With Chairs Up Their Noses. Jim has also played with bands such as Feral Dinosaurs, Brainshack, Venom P. Stinger, Hessian Sax, Conway Savage And The Deep South, Blackeyed Susans, Busload Of Faith, Kim Salmon's STM, Dirty Three and Charles Marshall And The Body Electric.

In addition to his band work, Jim has lived part-time in Chicago since the late 1990s and has collaborated with numerous artists as a session musician. He has contributed to records or tours with Will Oldham (*Bonnie "Prince" Billy*), Cat Power (*Chan Marshall*), Nina Nastasia, Smog (*Bill Callahan*), and White Magic. Jim is also a member of Tren Brothers (with Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner) and Boxhead Ensemble.

It is important not to confuse Jim White with the Americana singer/songwriter *Jim White*, who typically does not play drums.

The ever-elusive Americana maverick Jim White returns with his most upbeat, hallucinogenic record to date, on Loose. Known for his catalog of dark ruminations on all things Southern, White’s latest outing, Misfit’s Jubilee, features a nonstop parade of manic, blue-collar conflagrations exploring realms dark and light, mystic and mundane, cynical and heartfelt; all presented within a buoyant, hook-laden sonic framework. The raucous opener, Monkey in a Silo, provides a delirious peek into the drug-addled psyche of a teenage dope smuggler. From that ignominious jumping off point down the rabbit hole we go, pin-balling through a maze of quirky, marginalized characters jubilantly embracing various stages of existential undoing—who knew falling to pieces could be so much fun? And yet nestled comfortably amidst the high-octane sturm und drang of Misfit’s Jubilee lie several sanguine jewels; the ebullient 80’s indie folk-rockesque The Sum of What We’ve Been and the moody, piano-driven Mystery of You come breezing in as bonafide crowd pleasers, dispelling any thought of relegating White to some narrow, fringe-artist category. Known for his intricately layered, highly cinematic production values (his songs appear in numerous film and TV scores; Breaking Bad, last year’s feature film El Camino, and more) White’s novelistic eye for detail is fully on display in the darkly comedic Highway of Lost Hats. Featuring a lovelorn loser on the run from the law, White juxtaposes samples from actual US police chases against a steady stream of Southern Rock cliches. Highway of Lost Hats is a sonic carjacking veering recklessly across several major genre lanes, rendering it more a short noir film than a song—something to be watched, only with one’s ears, not eyes. Plunging headlong into Misfit’s Jubilee one central truth emerges—the further White dives into the material, the deeper said material gets, culminating with the closing couplet of epic show stoppers. First comes the sprawling kitsch of My Life’s a Stolen Picture (replete with stadium anthem chants and shout-outs to Bigfoot), but the ribald mood is quickly displaced by the most overtly political song on the record, The Divided States of America. A scathing indictment of the sorry state of affairs in his homeland, White’s deadpan delivery brilliantly underscores the banal evil at play presently in the US. Recorded primarily at Studio Caporal in Antwerp, Belgium, this record marks a departure from White’s usual hopscotch approach to collaboration—no bevy of celebrated guest artists and studios scattered across the globe this go-round. No, it’s just multi-instrumentalist White, his longtime drummer Marlon Patton, plus trusted Belgian sidemen Geert Hellings (guitar/banjo) and Nicolas Rombouts (electric and stand-up bass/keys), and the pared-down chemistry on display here lends Misfit’s Jubilee a sonic integrity that far exceeds any of White’s previous efforts. Misfit’s Jubilee draws from an array of original songs penned by White over the span of several decades—scattered among the recent compositions are songs back-burnered in previous epochs by White’s major label handlers, this after said songs were deemed too extreme for his “brand”. With no such middle-man constraints this go-round, in Misfit’s Jubilee White has found the perfect vehicle to unleash his twisted take on southern folk rock. As White’s protagonist in the song Wonders Never Cease defiantly declares, “A motel’s as good a place as any to let your demons fly!” Amen, Brother White. The Americana maverick has let his sonic demons fly herein, setting the skies fully ablaze, like some LSD fueled 4th of July fireworks spectacular. Get ready to be dazzled.

Misfit's Jubilee

Music GB

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