Jack White: No Name

Never let it be said Jack White can’t write the hell out of a riff. And despite “playing” the guitar, I couldn’t tell you if what he does is impressive or not, but his simplistic (or maybe not so) riffage is hooky, dynamic and muscular in the way you just want your bluesy guitar rock to be. That was the magic of The White Stripes, after all. The kind of AC/DC of the blues punk set. But this album, rather than iconic earworms, is kind of a poppier version of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. In that to some extent the album values volume and distortion and blues and an arm’s length approach to storytelling that is obscured by noisy bravado rather than heart-felt emo goodness. Too on-the-nose to be obscure and too obscure to be meaningful. Of course, does anyone really know what the Seven Nation Army is?

Do you know what a distortion field is? Yeah, me neither. But somehow I feel like the term applies to this album. At first I’m like “Fuck yeah, he’s back!” The crunch. The crashing cymbals. The jerky in and out of the choruses. The snarl. It’s all familiar and on the surface Zeppelin cock rock. But then you hit track after track of pushed-to-eleven showmanship and it all becomes a drone-y buzz. That squealing guitar. That squealing voice. The complete absence of a floor tom. The lyrics that feel like a meme-generated oldey timey sayings machine. A carnival barker with a Strat.

It’s tough on the ears is what I’m saying. It’s like garage punk Mr. Bungle. Shit, is Jack White his generation’s Mike Patton?! Crap, they’re both Gen X, so maybe White is the sanitized, way more commercial Patton. Though I wouldn’t call this album particularly commercial per se. It’s definitely not crazy, or even weird, really. There are songs that sound at times like really tweaked, grunged-up versions of Raconteurs songs. Or like Billy Squier or one of those 70s bands that I can’t quite place on songs like “Tonight (Was A Long Time Ago).” Which, admittedly, is a pretty rocking tune and made my inner-hesher headbang like a greasy creep. 

Look, for an almost-fifty-year-old Jack White has a lot of energy. The man has made an album that taken as a whole is a pretty guileless attempt at creating a very specific tough-guy aesthetic. But then that aesthetic is applied over and over again. And over again. I wish I knew more about music theory and could tell you what about the chord progressions didn’t quite hang with me for the entirety of the record. Taken song by song, it’s actually more enjoyable. But when listened front to back, you start to sense a pattern in his chords, his cadence, his songwriting that becomes tiring. And not because I’m old and can’t take the grime of the music, but because he goes back to the well over and over again with the same song structures. And, frankly, the drums are probably the thing that wears me out the worst. The constant banging. I just need some dynamic range and separation in the din. I do think that people will dig this album because it has that White Stripes DNA to it, but I do wish he paused for a second and remembered the pop that made those records what they were.