ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Jack White – Lazaretto

As the greatest success story of Nashville in recent years, albino conversationalist Jack White returns with a follow up solo project – we say solo here, but we all know Stripes and Raconteurs were all about Mr White –to the über successful Blunderbuss debut. Lazaretto’s predecessor was developed in inspired self-searching song writing from its creator, which was enveloped in lashings of rich textured blues. What we see from today’s release is a whole new idolised methodology in what is again, magnificent song writing and musicality – spanning punked up Americana, psych and those blues, oh the blues.

While White’s words may be deservedly influential in their own right, it seems with Lazaretto he rests on no laurels and takes influence from further musical greats. Enlisting David Bowie’s renowned cut-up technique, White has pawed through piles of one page short stories – found in his attic, which he wrote when he was 19 in Detroit – to cut lines from these tales of his first experience of love and early performances in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Bowie’s renditions of this technique were wayward majestic creations, White’s are more linear and concentrated on Lazaretto. The meanings aren’t too far splayed from their original short story roots, with love playing a common reoccurring theme throughout the album. The polygamous opener Three Women detonates the overtly eccentric White that we have become oh so familiar and he belts, “Well these women must be getting something/Cause they come and see me every night.”

Maybe these three women are in fact Lillie Mae Rische, Ruby Amanfu and Olivia Jean who together each offer a wash of backing vocals throughout the record, providing a welcome female touch reminiscent Jack’s White Stripes escapades.

Having clocked up 45 production credits – through his own label Third Man Records and numerous other projects that include clientele of Transit, The Dead Weather and the Insane Clown Posse – it’s no surprise that upon taking the helm once again on Lazaretto, the finished project is second to none. Taking the Foo Fighters approach of fanciful retro, this album has been recorded in analogue on two locked together 8-track reel-to-reel tape recording machines. Paired with much of the album being recorded with full live bands, the result is blistering – on the likes of the warped bar fight belters of the title track, High Ball Stepper and The Black Bat Licorice – and almost intrusively intimate on the Deep South proposal ballads of Temporary Ground, Would You Fight For My Love?, and Entitlement. There’s a sensation of further nostalgia knocking as Alone In My Home reminisces back the White Stripes, as jabs of key mark unmistakable sensibility to My Doorbell.

Nashville, the unofficial home of song, witnesses more than its fair share of warbled incestuous redneck love songs, marred by countless big break seekers. It’s rendered the area saturated with acoustic noise that – through recent times – has only delivered unwanted background noise to TGI Friday’s everywhere but its home country. But Jack White and his latest instalment on Lazaretto brings faith back into its home-grown surroundings. Building from cliché and yawnworthy themes, he injects them with twisted undertones and mindboggling music selection. It proves that songwriters can do much more than pluck six strings through their hay stained teeth.