It’s no wonder people don’t know what to say about White Denim—it took me about 20 minutes to figure out what was going on after they took stage. But here’s my theory: right before the show, they said to each other, “I know! Let’s each drink a gallon of iced tea super fast and then get through as many of our songs as fast as we can without stopping until urine itself is dripping from our pores!”

White Denim played for 35 minutes straight with Josh Block (drummer) and James Patrelli (lead singer/guitarist) doing the pee-pee dance and bassist Steve Terebecki looking like a confident chinchilla wrangling a python (he only pretended to drink the iced tea, and actually dumped it out behind him when the others weren’t looking). They ran through several songs from their latest album, Fits, spliced between new and old jams. The band seemed to be having fun making us all wonder, “Is this the show? Are they…? What is going on?!”

In a perfect release of tension, White Denim broke into their first whole, actual song, followed by some surprisingly lovely vocals coming from Patrelli, who removed his glasses and sexy-shrieked like James Brown for us. By the time they got to “I Start To Run,” the crowd was totally onboard. Some had even gone overboard and threw their heads around in uncontrolled spasms.

The band closed out the set and headed backstage—a completely windowed room upstairs where we watched Josh and James take a few puffs on cigarettes and awaited their return. They descended the stairs, poised and refreshed, and performed the mellowed-out “I’d Have It Just The Way We Were” and personal favorite “Don’t Look That Way At It.” Even the mom in the audience standing next to me approved of these ones. Turns out these boys clean up pretty nice, actually.

—Amber Hollingsworth