Perusing the discography of the veteran Australian drummer Jim White — encompassing more than 30 years’ worth of work with some of the leading singer-songwriters and instrumentalists in indie music — you might be tempted to compare him to the session aces of yore, holding him up as a contemporary counterpart to a Steve Gadd or Jim Keltner. But the truth is that neither that nor any other familiar category really quite suits him.
Neither a chameleonic sideman nor a freewheeling improviser, neither a rock specialist nor a jazz swinger, Jim White is sui generis — as much his own species as, say, Milford Graves or Keith Moon. As subtle as his contributions to the work of Bill Callahan, Cat Power or Bonnie “Prince” Billy can be, he’s never a mere background presence. And in his collaborative duos with Nina Nastasia, Marisa Anderson, Ed Kuepper, Cretan laouto player George Xylouris (in Xylouris White) and Emmett Kelly (in the Double), or his signature and longest-running project, Dirty Three, he’s as much a lead voice as anyone else — his percussion always contributing deep atmosphere and almost shamanic sense of mystery.
White’s roots lie in the Melbourne punk underground of the early-to-mid-’80s. Moving through a series of early bands, including Happy Orphans, Feral Dinosaurs and the People With Chairs Up Their Noses, he formed Venom P. Stinger in 1985 with guitarist and future Dirty Three bandmate Mick Turner. Their debut album, Meet My Friend Venom, already revealed White as a highly unusual drummer, supplying a kind of loose, primal drive that seemed directly at odds with any familiar approach to underground rock in the era.
Most international listeners first heard Dirty Three on their self-titled second LP, reissued by Touch and Go in 1995 after its initial release on the Aussie indie Torn & Frayed. The album revealed a perfectly balanced trio, with Warren Ellis’s fiercely emotive violin and Mick Turner’s alternately delicate and snarling guitar matching White’s range and idiosyncrasy. Their approach only deepened on defining epics Horse Stories and Ocean Songs, where White supplies everything from faint wisps of brushes and woodblocks to a raucous folk-punk barrage.
White soon forged bonds with the new vanguard of American indie-folk artists, amplifying the rawness and honesty of the songs of Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power), Will Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie “Prince” Billy) and Callahan (a.k.a. Smog) with his unusually intuitive style. He would continue working with all three for years to come, adapting his approach to their creative evolutions: He often appeared live with Oldham amid work on the lovely and cinematic The Letting Go and earlier EPs, while with Marshall, he anchored her crack roots-rock backing band Dirty Delta Blues, heard on the brilliant covers album Jukebox, and with Callahan, he let loose on Resuscitate!, a freewheeling live set.
It’s no wonder that he paired perfectly with other eccentric singer-songwriters, from Nastasia to Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, the former in a long-running partnership and the latter on the collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice. Instrumental projects bloomed as well, including conceptual trance-boogie duo the Double and a rustic yet mystical pairing with guitarist Anderson.
Xylouris White has been a prime White vehicle in the 2010s and beyond, showing that his earthy percussive summonings pair just as well with Greek folk music as with any American or Australian strain.
Other projects found him forging connections in his homeland, such as his intimately attuned duo with Kuepper, an older Aussie punk veteran whose bands the Saints and Laughing Clowns were an important early influence on White, or Springtime, an avant-folk trio that teamed him with Gareth Liddiard of Tropical Fuck Storm and Chris Abrahams of the Necks. Two other bands grew out of his adopted home of New York: Beings, an alternately pastoral and skronky collective featuring multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Zoh Amba, guitarist Steve Gunn, and bassist and synth player Shahzad Ismaily, and the Hard Quartet, a masterfully vibey indie-rock supergroup with Kelly, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus and widely traveled guitarist Matt Sweeney.
White’s late-career flowering has also included Love Changes Everything, a glorious new Dirty Three LP released after a 12-year gap between albums, which found the group sounding as organic and volatile as ever, and in an unexpected twist, the launch of a solo project, honed in collaboration with producer (and D.C. punk legend) Guy Picciotto. White’s two albums under his own name to date, All Hits: Memories and Inner Day feel like companion pieces, sharing a serene and immersive vibe built around gently pulsing synths and beautifully spare drumming that often suggests leaves rustling in the breeze, with bits of spoken word worked in. More than 40 years into a constantly evolving career, he’s still finding new ways to make his drums sing new songs and speak in uncommon tongues.