Jack White - Blunderbuss

Let's start this off by saying thank you to Jack for giving us the best Rolling Stones record since 1973's Goat Heads Soup which if you take everything after that record that band became nothing more than a singles act. Here Jack White's new album Blunderbuss works perfectly within the classic Stones instruction manual. He has some country sounds but never crosses over into true country territory. At times he's folk in spirit but never becomes unabashed in his delivery to be considered a folk act. There are many songs that are glistening with rock n' roll swagger that nobody outside of maybe the Black Keys have delivered in years.

The album opens with a sassy little number called "Missing Pieces" that has more depth and weight than all the current music on rock radio combined. This is a real piece of art and a perfect song because of the spirited delivery wonderfully organic musicianship and of course Jack's cool vocals. As simple as the song might be you can't deny the edgy coolness that invades your ears for 3:27. “Every morning I deliver the news,” shrieks Jack White on Sixteen Saltines. “Black hat, white shoes and I’m red all over.” With its slasher guitar and funky Hammond organ riffs powering an emotional roller-coaster of lust and jealousy, this is White as his fans probably always imagined him.

 The album has some moments that aren't just jaw dropping genius creations they are epic journeys of emotion set to music. The incredible pain of "Love Interuption" that is present in the words is delivered with a passive aggressive musical passage. White's predilection for a modern Orson Welles mystique is the thread networking the seam that pulls the blues-demon / folk romantic / Rock vagabond / Old West saloon spittoon anthems together into a mix of, frankly, shockingly fluid cohesion. But nothing prepares us for the sinister creep and tumbling percussion cauldron of "Freedom At 21". Suddenly our ideas of a "Jack White record" seem quaint in light of this monstrous personality, this damnation of modernity that embraces the man-eaters of the era vulgaris, enabled by culture and corrupted by mean-spirited self-absorbtion. Hey, we've all been there, right?
 

Somewhere between these two poles, between a fan-like enthusiasm for the historic base of “classic” rock ’n’ roll and a restless, itchy urge for originality, Jack White has concocted an absolute corker: a rich, ripe masterpiece with two feet in the past and a nose for the future. Yet, for all the pain and self-doubt, it sounds like White is having a ball. From its raucous, raw-edged opening salvo to the softer, weirder, ruminative closing tracks, Blunderbuss crackles with life and energy, hauling roots rock out of the dusty museum and into the dazzling light of the modern day.

Rounding the final bend, "Take Me With You When You Go" is a gang-vocal backup party with Ruby, Laura Matula and White's ex Karen Elson lending breath. Carla's fully immersive percussive dynamic carries the jalopy down the road, coupled with Jack's piano flurries - until a false finish at the two-minute mark, when a rush of keys tells us the fun's not over, the fuzz guitar takes charge and shit gets righteous. A fiery heel-clicker solo and shimmying vocal - a thickly-harmonized melody volleying with Ruby - through the final verse sends us off smashingly, a rollicking celebration and parting kiss.

Oddly enough, we started listening to this album hoping to hear a handful of future club-friendly hits in the vein of 'Seven Nation Army' or 'Steady As She Goes'. By the end, we were charmed and warmed by the Stones country influences and feeling very foolish for hoping that Jack White would simply repeat his previous successes. A spectacular solo debut from an established musician, 'Blunderbuss' more than secures White's position as one of the world's biggest rock stars, whether alone or with a band. One of 2012's finest rock albums. We can psychoanalyze the road, the reasons and the rationale, we can marvel like stargazers at the Wonka-meets-Welles architecture or we can just spin the black circle and celebrate.