Inner Day

While drummer Jim Whites 2024 album All Hits: Memories was technically his first solo outing, it came decades into a career so storied that Whites playing style had already been speaking for itself for years. Compartmentalizing the output of a player like White is difficult. Hes possibly best known for his loose, nautical expressionism as one-third of the Dirty Three, a band where his woozy, free playing is more an additional melodic tangent than an anchor. Add that to hundreds of performances as a session player or in collaborative projects, and it becomes hard to know where to put Whites solo work in his astronomically large body of work. Inner Day is less drums-centric than All Hits: Memories was. Here, White wanders playfully through synthesizer pieces that can be meditative or restless, augmenting them with rhythm instruments to varying degrees. Miniatures like "Cloudy," "Whats Really Happening," and "The Blinded Bird" recall the synth sketches that made their way onto Roedelius solo work, sometimes with a twitter of drumming added to their minute-or-two run times, sometimes not. More involved tracks include a greater drum presence, as with the bursts of percussion that come in and out of focus on the slightly brooding "Longwood," or the free jazz inclinations of "Thanksgiving (Three Dead Walls)." Throughout, Whites songs feel more stumbled upon than composed, maintaining a gentle flow as synths and drums have quiet conversations with each other. Theres some spoken verse on the title track, and Zoh Amba (well known as an astounding saxophonist and a moonlighting singer/songwriter) evokes some of Patti Smiths iconic street punk energy with their vocals on curveball track "I Dont Do/Grand Central." White doesnt aim for emotional grandiosity on Inner Day, but uses the album as a place to collect some spare instrumental musings and let them float around before one idea fades into the next. ~ Fred Thomas