Inner Day

Jim White’s musical output and cult-favorite renown have reached a welcome peak in the 2020s, amid the sui generis Australian drummer’s renewed activity with Dirty Three, ongoing collaborations with Bill Callahan, and new ventures such as the Hard Quartet, Beings, and a duo with Ed Kuepper of the Saints and Laughing Clowns. Maybe the most surprising development of this era has been the launch of a proper solo career, with two albums under his own name, made in close collaboration with Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, who previously produced a string of records for the drummer’s duo Xylouris White. Fittingly for a percussionist as eccentric as White, they’re about as far as could be imagined from any sort of conventional solo drum showcase. 

Inner Day is actually even less drum-centric than its predecessor, 2024’s All Hits: Memories. Built around gentle synth tones and pulsations, it casts White’s drums in a subtle and coloristic role, such as on “Cloudy,” where a faint bass drum pulse and a gentle roll on the kit’s metal edges produce a pleasingly trancelike effect. Elsewhere, White focuses on rustling bells and whispering cymbals or a kind of a shuffling, abstract flow that feels adjacent to free-jazz percussion but entirely apart from it. Vocals turn up occasionally but make a strong impression, as on the title track, with its meditative White recitation, or “I Don’t Do / Grand Central,” built around a playful half-spoken, half-sung duet with the multi-instrumentalist Zoh Amba.