For his second solo album, master drummer Jim White travels further into expressionist landscapes of private meditation; his vehicle, an evocative duet of keyboards and drums alongside his debut as a vocalist. Translating his formidable percussive intuitions through this dialogue has given Jim a fresh compositional voice. Inner Day is like a state of nature, evoking peace and tension, rest and disquiet, all aloft on the wind of new discovery.
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In March 2024, Jim White released his first-ever solo album, All Hits: Memories. Coming forty years into his career, it felt like some kind of breakthrough happening. His second solo album confirms it: Jim’s deep percussive intuition is fueling a new musical vehicle in his life. Inner Day finds him dancing ever more deftly with himself on an expressionistic set of drum kit and keyboard duets. Developing meditations on his personal arcana into expressive keyboard feels, he crafts parts as he would on the kit, further interacting with them on drums as well. Jim takes another big step on Inner Day, singing on two standout tracks, “Inner Day” and “I Don’t Do / Grand Central,” his words and voice in the mix for the first time.
A drummer of exquisite powers, great and small — his Dirty Three compatriot Warren Ellis contends his playing long ago “split the atom” — Jim’s capable of driving a band one minute, then slipping past accompaniment and into the cracks of the subliminal in the next breath. He’s got qualities — deep pockets, a lovely sense of the moment — that serve him and those he drums with well. His collaborators include Bill Callahan, Cat Power, Marisa Anderson, Daniel Blumberg, T. Griffin, Phosphorescent, Jess Ribeiro, Ed Kuepper and Mess Esque, alongside communal experiences in Xylouris White, The Double, Beings, The Hard Quartet and Dirty Three. And all that’s just in the past five years!
Inner Day is a state of nature: peace and tension, rest and disquiet aloft on the wind of Jim’s inspiration. Warren Ellis again:
“Mr. White has forged one of the most distinct and challenging careers in music. All heart and guts. Take no prisoners. His first solo album blew my mind. He’d cracked it. The mother fucker. The album we are all trying to make. Evasive, inclusive, single minded and edited with the perfection I’ve come to expect from Jim. [Inner Day] is a miracle. The man. The drums. That White style. The heartbeat of life.”
Working in conversation with his long-time collaborator Guy Picciotto on Inner Day, Jim travels further into the hypnotic relationships that they captured on All Hits: Memories. Here’s another old friend, filmmaker Jem Cohen:
“I drove around listening to Jim’s new record. It fit so well, even when the things themselves didn’t: the straights and turns of the road, fields and houses and industrial parks, the possible rain, deep spring greens and the greys of a parking lot, the rain when it finally came. It goes where it will, quite fearlessly but never demonstrative or showy about its risk-taking. I’d say the record’s a conversation Jim’s having with the world, one that isn’t about drums or being a drummer but, more expansively, about music as the spillway for feeling and experience.”
Jim himself adds:
“On my first album All Hits: Memories, I wanted to have a keyboard sound to keep the drums company as together they celebrated why some things just ‘hit’ the psyche, why some memories stick. Later, I found the notes wanted to move more and so on my second album Inner Day, that is what they do.”
What more is there to say? The music tells the rest…
