BLUNDERBUSS

I've been listening to this one for more than a week now. Weirdly, not because it hit home with me, but quite the contrary. I didn't know what to make of it, so I had listened and listened, hoping some sort of overall feel might come forth eventually. Admittedly, musically speaking I've been in an eerie zone lately, what with all the classical stuff pouring into my ears and the desperate need for calm and silence. So, yeah, "Blunderbuss" came as a bit of a cold shower and a nail on the glass when compared to, say, Satie's piano. Which is, of course, an unfair juxtaposition, apples and pears. So I gave it one final, hopefully objective listen before opening the gap in my face commonly known as mouth.

So we're talking about Jack and his first solo album. I needed a starting point, so I tried to triangulate: The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather. Ok, so it sounds nothing like The White Stripes, that much is obvious. "I'm shakin'" comes as close to the Stripes as this album will ever get. But it does contain traces of the other two bands. For example, I could easily see the song "Blunderbass" on a Raconteurs album, or "Sixteen Saltines" on a Dead Weather album. Right? I'm not just imagining it, yeah? That's fair enough, though, Jack's mind being behind all of these projects, it's only natural that some familiar sounds would leak through this project as well. And we love those sounds anyway.

One thing I did expect, to be honest, were more guitar-driven songs. I was looking forward to some brain-melting solos, and there are a few, but no "Blue Veins" here, I'm afraid. But there's lots of piano, hardly a song without it. All the songs are well-crafted, carefully structured and arranged....well, what did you expect, really? It's quite redundant to point that out in Jack's case, isn't it? The man can write a song.

As far as the lyrics go, from what I've been able to gather (haven't looked them up on the internet), it's mostly about relationships gone awry, the battle between sexes, stories / confessions , sometimes appologies and regrets, sometimes cusses and bile. It's autobiographical without a doubt, his break up with band-mate Meg and then with his wife, Karen, must have left him with some internal inquiries, as these things usually tend to do. And sometimes the songs sound like an autopsy (quite literally in "Missing Pieces"), and sometimes like a brief glance through the mirror and into the past.

All in all, this album certainly grows on you, even if your expectations were somewhat different, "rockier" perhaps, as mine were. The rock is there, the blues is there, but there's also a streak of childish insanity, the kid who wants to break stuff and pour gasoline on everybody's favorite cats.

Jack White - Freedom at 21


Jack White - Weep Themselves to Sleep