Wow. Jack White’s new project is the best new music I’ve heard in a long time.

The album is short — ten tracks, a little more than a half hour. And if I had to offer up one criticism, it’s that several cuts beg for a longer treatment. Especially “Call It a Day,” which teases with the promise of a bangin’ chorus, but never comes through. Hell, it took me four listens to realize that I wasn’t in fact going to get it. It’s a great song even without the release, though. And the restraint was ballsy.

For such a short album, it brims with influences, mostly from the 70s. There’s more Led Zeppelin in here than in anything White’s done with the White Stripes. There’s also some T. Rex, some Big Star, some David Bowie, and a ton of arena-rock supergroups from the era (I kept hearing Yes, Kansas, Frampton, and Queen). There’s a wrenching bluesy burn called “Your Blue Veins” that in another life was about eight minutes long, and belted out not by White, but by Robert Plant on some sweltering summer night, from some sold-out cookie-cutter baseball stadium in, oh, say, about 1977.

Remarkably, despite those influences, the album forges its own sound. It’s experimental, but no where near self-indulgent. There are some backward loops and other technical shenanigans, but the album pops with the analog soundscape White employed on the White Stripes Elephant, and in that terrific Loretta Lynn album he produced. There aren’t many people in the music business these days who’d dare to cut a record so heavy with an AOR sound. Even fewer who could actually pull it off, not sound like a knock-off, and still sound fresh enough for radio play. White’s voice is as confident as it’s ever been. Brendan Benson’s vocals aren’t great — in spots, he sounds intimidated by White. But the barrage of hooks and White’s superb production more than take up the slack.

This is the best roll-down-the-windows-and-drive-fast summer album since Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers a few years ago. Agitator.com recommended.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 6:00 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.