Jack White
No Name
Third Man
Aug 15, 2024
Web Exclusive
“I’m here to tear down the institution,” howls Jack White like a demented carnival barker in “Archbishop Harold Holmes,” a spiked cocktail of twisted narrative that comes just before the mid-way point of his bracing new record, No Name. Since disbanding The White Stripes, White has built a few institutions of his own in amassing an unlikely rock and roll empire. But No Name sheds any pretense to legacy building; it’s an exhilarating, scorched earth blast.
Whereas the double punch of 2022’s Entering Heaven Alive and Fear of the Dawn pushed White’s stylistic range to extremes, on No Name he does the opposite, stripping back the sound to a bare-bones rawness that crackles like an exposed wire. Comparisons to White’s old band are unavoidable, not just in the blunt immediacy of the attack, but in the sounds themselves, spearheaded by a guitar tone so visceral you feel like you can reach out and touch it. It’s a weapon he wields like a flame-thrower across the record, igniting the songs with dense sheets of chordal fuzz or unhinged solo mayhem.
This sense of abandon could register as an empty gesture if the songs didn’t cohere with such unbridled power. “That’s How I’m Feeling” is a rude slab of fuzz that finds White in brazenly self-actualizing mode, while “What’s the Rumpus?” pairs a coffin-tight groove with a loping riff before the band cuts loose over White’s double-tracked vocal hook. And “Tonight (Was a Long Time Ago)” apes Angus Young with sparsely placed verse chords before giving way to an infectious chorus that shifts into a thick half-time grind mid-way.
No Name is the sound of an artist let loose in the funhouse, doing what he does best. It’s a low stakes record that serves as something of a reset for White; it also reconnects him with his primal muse. (www.jackwhiteiii.com)
Author rating: 8.5/10
Average reader rating: 8/10
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