1 day Ago By BY BEN ROWE P-R Music Critic
Making lightning strike twice is one of the hardest tricks in any art form. On the one hand, if you just do the same thing that made you famous to begin with, people might grow bored. On the other hand, if you mix it up and do something different, people will whine that they miss “the old stuff.
” And so it’s with that in mind that I listened this month to the latest release from the iconic guitar hero Jack White. Titled “No Name,” the album seems to see a return to the grittier rock sounds of an “Icky Thump”-era White. Readers might remember that I gave a listen to White’s previous release last summer, the folksy “Entering Heaven Alive”, and wasn’t the biggest fan of that effort.
As a reminder, White was the frontman for the iconic 2000s rock band The White Stripes, which remains one of my all-time favorites. But since the Stripes’ breakup in the early 2010s, White has worked to indulge his love of folk and blues sounds more than the shredding guitars of his White Stripes years. And while I know for a fact that he has both the passion for those sounds and the skills to pull them off, I can’t help but think his solo albums have failed to live up to his true songwriting talent.
That goes directly back to the dilemma I wrote about at the start of this column: When a musician bursts onto the scene with a crazy new sound that becomes instantly popular, where do you go from there? As I wrote in that last review, it’s clear that White’s answer to this is just to play the music he loves, and I can only wish him all the best for that. That being said, this latest album still ends up sounding less like Jack White and more like a musician who will one day become Jack White. The album starts out strong with a pair of rip-roaring opening tracks in “Old Scratch Blues” and “Bless Yourself.
” One of White’s strengths has always been that classic blues standby of “proclaiming” lyrics like you’re tearing them right from your soul. “Bless Yourself” opens with just such a case as White declares: When I walk into the structure I do myself a favor And I bless myself, yes And he gives the sort of pulpit delivery that makes you want to stand up and cry “Yes, Lord!” And, as the man who gave us the immortal lines “all the words are gonna bleed from me and I will think no more,” White’s wordplay remains unmatched. For me, it’s the instrumentals that continue to fall flat.
The energy from those first two tracks is neutered by the bass line that opens the album’s third song — a bass line I swear I’ve heard from any number of bubbly alt-rock bands of the 2010s. And even when the instrumentals do kick into high-gear, it still sounds painfully flat. Again, the fatal flaw for White’s second act is the fact that he made his name in the fuzz and snarls of songs like “Ball and Biscuit” and “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground.
” By comparison, so many of these instrumentals end up sounding like session musician backing tracks. And I say that only because White raised the bar so wonderfully high that I’d love to see him reach it again someday. That being said, I did have more fun listening to this effort than I did last year’s “Heaven.
” “Bombing Out” is a great moshing anthem, while “Tonight (Was A Long Time Ago)” feels like a lost Kinks track with its straight-forward but catchy riffs. In the end, “No Name” left me with the same feeling I had from the recent Green Day album. Both are musical acts 20 years removed from their heydays.
The energy is still there and it’s still a fun ride, but that killer instinct that they used to have to push the envelope? It’s apparently buried deeper still. I give “No Name” 3 stars out of 5. Have you listened to “No Name”? What did you think? Email Ben Rowe at browe@pressrepublican.
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