White Stripes

BOARDING HOUSE REACH is the new solo album from Jack White, and is a testament to the breadth of the artist's creative power and his bold artistic ambition. This new material finds Jack White expanding his musical palate with perhaps his most ambitious work thus far, a collection of songs that are simultaneously timeless and modern. Written and conceived while holed up in a spartan apartment with literally no outside world distractions, White exclusively used the same kind of gear he had when he was 15 years old (a quarter-inch four-track tape recorder, a simple mixer, and the most basic of instrumentation). The album explores a remarkable range of sonic terrain – crunching rock 'n' roll, electro and hard funk, proto punk, hip hop, gospel blues, and even country – all remapped and born anew to fit White's matchless vision and sense of restless experimentation.

Smothered by the indulgence of his rock star ranking, Jack White steps into the eccentricities of the supergroup, and at first glance, this seems to be a band where White's imposing presence could overshadow the rest. Not the case with these Raconteurs. Teaming with fellow Detroit songwriter Brendan Benson and Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, the rhythm section from Cincinnati band the Greenhornes, White exhales a bit, deferring enough to his mates to make Broken Boy Soldiers play like a team effort. Following the Benson blueprint, "Steady as She Goes," which opens as a slice of 1960's radio pop, the record steers away from pigeonholing the rest of the way. White's in a Middle Eastern mood for the title track as he pulls off a wicked Robert Plant howl, while Lawrence and Keeler excel on the chorus-strong "Intimate Secretary" and the optimistic acoustic rocker "Yellow Sun." Like so many all-star bands before them, The Raconteurs could be one and done. But don't place the blame on this fertile and genuine debut.

Jack White - Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016 (2016) {2CD XL Recordings XLCD826}
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© 2016 Third Face / Third Man Records / XL Recordings | XLCD826
Acoustic / Rock / Indie / Blues / Folk / World

Natural-born archivist that he is, it is no surprise that Jack White would eventually choose to curate his own career. Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016 is his first attempt at offering an alternative narrative of his own career, one that places his quieter side as the connecting thread running from the White Stripes through the Raconteurs to his solo work. It's a tactic that diminishes some of the conventional notions about White, particularly that most of his music is grounded in the blues. Despite Greil Marcus' mention of blues icon Son House in the liner notes, most of the music on Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016 bears stronger ties to country and folk, even British Invasion pop; the latter is evident not only on the singsong whimsy of "We're Going to Be Friends" but the cinematic melancholy of "Forever for Her (Is Over for Me)."

The Dead Weather - Horehound (2009) {Third Man Records - 88697539122} (featuring Jack White)
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© 2009 Third Man Records / Columbia / Sony Music | 88697539122
Rock / Alternative / Blues Rock / Indie Rock / Garage Rock Revival

Expectations for a project featuring members of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, the Kills, and Queens of the Stone Age would almost have to run high. After all, these are all bands that find ways to draw on the classic tenets of rock without sounding completely indebted to the past. Yet the Dead Weather – which combines the talents of Jack White, Jack Lawrence, Alison Mosshart, and Dean Fertita – aren't so much concerned with living up to expectations as they are about defying them. There's a different kind of alchemy on Horehound than on any of the bandmembers' other projects. Not only does White returns to his first instrument, the drums, he also trades in the high-pitched yelp he uses with the Stripes and Raconteurs for a deeper, at-times unrecognizable, voice on "I Cut Like a Buffalo," the lone Horehound track he wrote by himself.