Release Date: July 19, 2024
Label: Third Man
Length: 43:03
Produced By: Jack White
Rating: 7.9
Review by: Alexander Hellene
Highlights: “Old Scratch Blues,” “It’s Rough On Rats,” “Tonight (Was A Long Time Ago),” “Bombing Out,” “Underground”
I always respected Jack White more than enjoyed his music. Not necessarily as a person, just for keeping the flame of good old-fashioned rawk alive, and being cool while doing it. For white men or a certain vintage, rock n’ roll matters, and we really don’t want to see it die out.
You’d think then I’d be a big fan of the late-90s/early-aughts rock revivalists, but not so fast! Most of them seemed very facile, copies of copies of copies. Think Greta Van Fleet, but hipsters.1 Jack White, though . . . he was different. He always seemed the most authentic, the least likely to trend-hop; from his earliest recordings with the White Stripes, you got the unmistakable sense that Jack White loved this music, lived it, understood it. It spoke to him and he was going to learn all about it that he could, turn it inside out, and make it his own. Respectfully, of course.
More importantly, he knew its roots.
Blues, rock, punk, it all goes into White’s filter and comes out of his guitar and pinched yowl.2 While some of his recent work has been, ah, questionable in terms of taste, his sixth solo album, No Name, goes back to the well. One imagines White with a stack of old Robert Johnson, Albert King, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Ramones, Minor Threat, and CCR records, rediscovering what about this music got him all jazzed up in the first place.
This is unpretentious, scruffy, raucous, and very American blues rock with punk sensibilities. This is a very pentatonic album, with lots of I-bIII chord progressions, dominant seventh chords, and enough hammer-on riffs to make Pete Townshend proud. There are terse rhythmic phrases which bring to mind Josh Homme3 and squealing guitar solos processed within an inch of their life. In other words, this stuff sounds good. It also helps that White knows how to write a song with a coherent beginning, middle, and end, with enough going on in between to keep the ear from getting bored. While No Name doesn’t have the stylistic diversity of, say, a peak Led Zeppelin album, it will scratch your rock itch and for that he should be commended.
No Name kicks off with zero artifice on “Old Scratch Blues,” which sets the tone: a slightly bluesy guitar riff melds into a chugging, Zeppelin-inspired stomp with a striking and unexpected up-tempo rave-up near the end, complete with a short guitar solo.4 Good stuff.
Get used to guitar solos. I for one am very glad that White is a practitioner of this lost art. Whether it’s the wah-and-slide grease-fest on slippery country rocker “Underground,” furious wailing on the Zeppelin-meets-AC/DC highlight “Tonight (Was A Long Time Ago),” or the whammy pedal on “Number One With A Bullet,”5 White always comes up with creative guitar tones—effective use of an octave pedal, for example, is all over the album.
And it mostly works! “Bless Yourself,” another rowdy mid-tempo stomper has been described as a blasphemous shot at organized religion, but I’m not getting that from the lyrics; the closest I see is:
People say
“I need God on command!
God on demand!”
If God's too busy then I'll bless myself
which really doesn’t come across as a shot against God Himself at all.
“It’s Rough On Rats” features cool piano-like arpeggios giving way to choppy rhythms before a Tommy-era Who main riff. The glissando-heavy solo gives White a chance to stretch out. White’s punk roots are reflected in the cacophonous “Bombing Out.” Less successful is “Archbishop Harold Holmes,” which is more frustrating than bad; White’s speak-singing takes on the character of an itinerant street preacher-cum-mystic promising the world, an updated “Cosmik Debris” perhaps? The song has a fun, chugging riff but is all tension and no release. “What’s the Rumpus?” starts with a catchy syncopated bassline and doesn’t do anything expected, but is a solid rock song—a breath of fresh air in 2024.
“That’s How I’m Feeling” is the closest thing on here to a car commercial song, with its simple four-note riff and soft/loud dynamics. It sounds a bit too polished and focus-grouped for this album, but is still more interesting than anything The Black Keys have been producing lately. By the time we get to the delay-soaked “Morning at Midnight”—complete with a descending mustache rock riff6 near the end—“Missionary,” which is straight out of the Queens of the Stone Age playbook with some John Bonham-inspired 16th note fills courtesy of drummer Patrick Keeler, and the expansive closer “Terminal Archenemy Ending,” you realize that No Name does nothing special, but does what it does it well. You get what you expect from a Jack White record, and in that regard No Name is a pleasantly surprising return to form. Give us what we want, Jack! Don’t hold back now!
What is White trying to say with this album? Perhaps “Terminal Archenemy Ending” provides a clue:
Where would I be if I didn't know you
From a factory to a country home?
And what would I have if I never really had you?
What's the point of being free if I'm all alone?. . .
How do you feel when you felt it all now?
And how do you see when you've seen it all?
At the end of the day, maybe Jack White is . . . content? If contentment can still inspire him to make good old-fashioned rock n’ roll like this, I’ll take it. My strange new respect for Jack White grows. In a world of Taylor Swifts and Charli XCXs, I for one am still glad there’s a place for Jack White to continue plying his trade.
No Name
Old Scratch Blues
Bless Yourself
That’s How I’m Feeling
It’s Rough On Rats
Archbishop Harold Holmes
Bombing Out
What’s the Rumpus?
Tonight (Was A Long Time Ago)
Underground
Number One With A Bullet
Morning At Midnight
Missionary
Terminal Archenemy Ending
Interestingly, I liked The Strokes. Other bands of that era were also very good, like Interpol (their early stuff, at least), Franz Ferdinand, and The Hives, who weren’t “garage rock revivalists,” but were (a) of that era, and (b) playing raucous, guitar-based rock music at a time when we were reliably informed such music had gone the way of the dodo bird. Of some other groups of the time, like The Bravery, we shall not speak.
I don’t care what anyone says: I think White has one of the best rock voices of the past 25 years.
Probably one of the few remaining guys with a guitar who still matters.
I must point out that the riff and the chord progression sound remarkably similar to Rush’s “BU2B” off of 2012’s masterpiece Clockwork Angels. I highly doubt a hip guy like White listens to Rush, but you be the judge.
I like the off-kilter, odd-time riff that bookends this song; it reminds me of Cream’s “Politician.”
If you know, you know.
The White Stripes were probably my favorite of the Garage Rock Revivalists. Jack White had such incredible focus with that band, keeping it simplistic and traditionalist while also bending at the edges and slipping in modern tricks and creative turns. Their deliberate three color scheme and instrument setup was a nod to the Trinity (which is why I'm baffled when people say he's anti-religious . . . he's Catholic and there's a lot of Christian references and subjects in his lyrics) helped them to stand out even more in a field that, at the time, seemed to be losing its identity. What even was Rock anymore? No one seemed to know, except, Jack White. That was a large part of their appeal to me.
Unfortunately, it's just never been the same since he and Meg parted ways. I can't even really describe why, because Jack is plenty talented to make it on his own, and he certainly has, but there is a level of mystique and uncertainty that he just can't seem to reach outside of the White Stripes. I've tried to get into his post-Stripes work and it just runs right off me. I can't expect everything to be White Blood Cells or Elephant but song quality isn't even when takes me out of it.
I don't know. It's like, say, when one band member cuts a solo record. It's nice, but I'm still going to be more excited for the full band's next album. And in this case that's unfortunately probably never going to happen.
I'm with ya, I respect Jack White more than I like his music. I understand why The White Stripes were (are?) so popular, but their music is just too slight for me. I should check out some of his stranger solo work, I might end up really diggin' it.
He slays live, though. If you ever get a chance and tickets aren't too ridiculously priced, I recommend it.