James Petralli has done this before. Album cycles repeat themselves, press runs, familiar questions, the same answers shaped into something usable. “I have to do this album promo for the 13th time in my life,” Petralli says. It is a blunt way into 13, White Denim’s new record, but also an honest one. The album does not come across as something detached from the rest of his life. It sounds tied to all of it—family, routine, aging, and the work of trying to stay connected to other people.
“I think that my work has always kind of dealt with miscommunication,” Petralli says. He traces it back even further, calling it “one of the most constant themes in my work going back to like the very beginning.” Then he gets more direct: “I personally, I want to understand the people in my life, and I want to be understood.” He does not make that sound easy. “But it’s something that requires a lot of care and dedication to be able to do it,” he says. “So, I think that if you’re trying to do it, there’s always going to be like collision and misunderstanding.”
That is where 13 starts to open up. Petralli is not talking about connection like it is warm or automatic. He is talking about it like labor. “That can be messy,” he says, before calling it “a process” and “a worthy endeavor” as long as the effort is still there.
It is also where the songs start to make more sense. When “Chew Nails” comes up, the lyric about people falling in love but not wanting to make friends leads him straight back to the same idea. “To me, a good friend will tell you when you’re making mistakes, and they’ll tell you in a loving way,” Petralli says. “And if you’re a good friend to them, you’ll be able to hear that and sit with it and try to understand.” He pushes it further, saying, “I’ve had a lot of relationships that didn’t feel like reciprocal” and later, “really we want to be friends and I think that that takes work.” In his telling, the song is not really about romance at all. It is about whether people are willing to stay in the uncomfortable parts long enough to actually know each other.
The same friction shows up differently in “Hired Hand #2.” Petralli calls it “a sad song that’s like… a takedown of capitalism,” then strips it down even further: “it’s about exploitation.” But he also knows that is not necessarily how people will hear it. “With that chorus, like I want people to be like, ‘Oh, great, I love this one,’” he says, before laughing about the irony and comparing it to the way people misread “Born in the U.S.A.” It is one of the clearest moments on the album where surface and meaning pull in different directions on purpose.
Outside the record, social media only seems to make all of this harder. Petralli says it plainly: “It’s really easy to kind of just assume that you know what’s going on with people or with yourself,” and he calls that feeling “weird and uncomfortable.” Later, talking more personally, he says, “I had no idea how you’re supposed to handle yourself or like what any of it means.” The result is not growth or clarity. “And now that I do, I feel like much worse,” he says.
At the same time, there is another life running beside all of that, and it is the one that seems to hold 13 together. Petralli talks about “working on an art project with my daughter and coaching my son’s baseball team,” adding, “it’s so much time. And I love it.” He says much of his music now comes together in the shed behind his house: “I walk like 15 steps every morning to enter the shed behind my house,” Petralli says. “I like get to conjure whatever. I can try to do something fun.”
He doesn’t leave it at that. “I just feel like really lucky that I don’t have to leave. I don’t have to sit in traffic to get to my office, I just walk back there with coffee and have fun while my kids are at school.”
“That freedom and lack of pressure maybe has yielded some positive results and changes in my life.” That shift in priorities comes through most clearly when he talks about his children. After describing his daughter winning an art contest, Petralli says, “If you can shut down and really focus on your kids and listen to them and build them. It’s just the greatest thing ever.” It is one of the least guarded things he says.
It also changes the way he talks about the band itself. “Even into my late thirties, I was so driven to just make something every day and like outdo my previous work,” he says. Now, he says, he can “enjoy my relationships and my accomplishments in a much different way.” That does not mean everything is resolved. In one of the most revealing moments of the conversation, Petralli says, “As my skill and like confidence and security as a person have risen, I’ve seen the band’s popularity decline.” He calls it something he is “wrestling with currently.”
That uncertainty never fully leaves. Talking about “Drive Trucks,” he says, “It’s probably like once every couple of months, I’ll feel like I can’t do this anymore.” But even there, he does not stay in despair for long. “Something will happen, and I’m back into it,” he says when the song’s meaning is reflected back to him, gratitude for where he is, and the knowledge that he could leave if he had to. Petralli does not hesitate: “Yeah, that’s it. That’s exactly it.”
In the end, that may be the cleanest way into 13. Not as a grand statement, and not as a neat resolution, but as a record made by someone who is no longer interested in pretending those things exist. Petralli says he wants people to hear the work in it. To feel “the architecture and the design and the building of it” when they listen.
13 is out Friday, and you can preorder it from here. Follow White Denim on Facebook and Instagram for future updates.
Photo Credit: Charlie Weinmann
