Pop 'stache

With Boys & Girls, the Alabama Shakes are chiseling out a spot for retro rock in today’s overly polished music arena. Their not-of-this-era sound channels the bluesy, raspy likes of Janis Joplin with aplomb. Lead songstress Brittany Howard carries no less than a tattoo of the state of Alabama on her right arm, and belts out songs with such soul and finesse that she may as well be telling her life story.

The story of Alabama Shakes all began, as Howard has said, during high school in 2009, when she and bassist Zac Cockrell (a fellow student in her Psychology class) began writing music together. The duo later met with drummer Steve Johnson and guitarist Heath Fogg to form the group’s present lineup.

Lead single “Hold On” captures the quintessential energy and authenticity that makes the group so alluring. Howard’s voluptuous vocals saturate the background as she sings, “Bless my heart / Bless my soul / Didn’t think I’d make it to 22-years-old / Their music be someone up above saying ‘Come on Brittany / You got to come on up / You got to hold on.’ ”

Throughout all of Boys & Girls, Howard fearlessly bares her emotions. In the gut-wrenching “Heartbreaker” she asks, “How was I supposed to know he was a heartbreaker?” Splashes of organ flesh out the pain of bemoaning a broken relationship. In contrast, the heartwarming “I Found You” picks up tempo and finds energy in a muscular guitar riff. Elated, Howard croons, “Well, I traveled a long way / And it took a long time to find you … / But I finally found you …” Whether the Alabama Shakes are performing a solemn or spirited song, the emotion and fire of Howard’s voice is always dialed up to 10.

Though Boys & Girls seems more befitting to an old-timey jukebox rather than the makings of a Spotify playlist, the music remains timeless. As James Brown and Elvis Presley before them have shown–when music is performed well, with gutso and passion, the format of distribution becomes irrelevant. Alabama Shakes remind listeners what rock ‘n’ roll sounds like when the soul supersedes the synthesizer.

Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls tracklist:

1. “Hold On”
2. “I Found You”
3. “Hang Loose”
4. “Raise to the Sun”
5. “You Ain’t Alone”
6. “Goin’ to the Party”
7. “Heartbreaker”
8. “Boys & Girls”
9. “Be Mine”
10. “I Ain’t the Same”
11. “On Your Way”
12. “Heavy Chevy”

Whoever decided to combine indie and pop was a dirty genius. It always charms with great things. Chicago-based Deserters are a prime example of this, and new Weird Weather is their evidence.

Something about the way electronic beats over piano backdrops mesh together creates an uplifting sense of comfort in the eardrums. Deserters are peppy but not over-the-top, in an overwhelming sense. The likeability factor is simply there and calmly forceful. Soon, people will be wanting more than a half-dozen tunes from the band, and they’d better be ready to meet the demands of their new fans.

“Landslide” is possibly the pinnacle of Weird Weather. The band can expect to play this song the most of all their hits, because a lot of promotion comes with a new record. This song is good and catchy, and people will want to hear it. It’s got a familiar sound to it, with a charging beat and a welcoming harmony over every lyric. It brings some wonderful “I do, I do, I do, I feel like a heavy rain/I do, I do, I do, I feel like a hurricane/ that pours harder when you’re around/that roars louder when you’re around,” entertaining a simile for the story he’s telling and becoming reminiscent to vintage songs that playfully used euphemisms so creatively.

Leader song “Lydia” is a letter written to a woman about being torn between living with this woman and moving elsewhere, caught in a spell of indecisiveness.  In an almost ironic move, the band accompanies this soliloquy with a violin and acoustic guitar combination, romanticizing a relatively petty thought process.

From there, electric guitars break onto the tracks for “Cigarette Smoke” before “My Old Ways” reminds us what Grey’s Anatomy soundtracks sounded like, combining an unknown indie flavor with a narrative about the past or speaking of an ambiguous relationship for the listener to fill in the blanks themselves.

“Bells” works boldly with electronic mixes, incorporating beeps and buzzes between verses. It’s unexpected and innovative, complementing their tasteful craft with a spin of creative energy splashed into the mix. “Evil Art” closes coolly and calmly with ease. Imagine the band wearing sunglasses indoors as they perform this song.

One thing is for sure: no song gets lost when you put out a six-song release. Every song is heard and noticed and nothing is neglected. Their efforts are fully recognized yet their work is concise. It’s a win-win, unless it’s simply not enough. But in any case, that’s a good problem to have.

What isn’t a good problem is the tendency of mediating in an energy that’s not fully cheerful but not melancholy, either. The band stays in a mellow place . It’s almost as if they’re bored in front of the microphone or behind the guitar or keyboard. It’s a shame, because if there’s something worth writing and producing material about, it should be something to be excited about. Telling your story is a gift and the audience isn’t treated like a gracious crowd but more like an accessory (a disposable one, at that). Let’s hope that when they reach audiences in person, they’re a little more animated. Your music, however good, can’t always stand for itself!

Death Grips is hip-hop for people with serious anger issues. That’s by no means derogatory, in fact, it’s a compliment. There’s been no shortage of crews coming out and trying to transcend horror-core (insert Odd Future namedrop here), but few have truly transcended that label. For every act that’s able to go beyond the subgenres limitations there’s a dozen more falling right in line, reaping all the attention. What makes Death Grips so unique is not only that the band made waves with its punishing mixtape Exmilitary, but that it somehow drummed up enough interest to garner major label attention without subsidizing its sound.

So how does this major label debut fare? Pretty damn well. The story of an ambitious and creative young act signing to a major only to have its creative vision impeded is a tale as old as the music industry itself, which is why it’s so shocking that The Money Store is even more intense and grating than Exmilitary.

It’s hard to say whether or not this is the first hip-hop record that owes as much to Wu-Tang Clan as it does Merzbow, but even if Death Grips isn’t the first, it’s making a case for it being the best.

Mc Ride’s vocals are just as shouted and angry as they were on Exmilitary, the only difference being his ability to incorporate huge sing-along hooks. Opening track “Get Got” is perhaps the most accessible Death Grips track to date, but even then it’s still a pummeling piece of vitriolic hip-hop.

The production courtesy of Hella’s Zach Hill and Andy Morin is more noise-based than ever before. If Exmilitary was Mc Ride releasing his rage through disgruntled verses, The Money Store is Hill and Morin releasing their hate with distorted, jagged production. Yet, in the midst of this chaos the group is able to produce hooks like the one on “I’ve Seen Footage” which has all the potential to become a club anthem – if people in clubs were ever that pissed.

While Death Grips has yet to catch as much flack for its lyrics as its juvenile kindred spirit Tyler, the Creator did, there’s a reason the violent, horrific images created by Mc Ride resonate: because they are well articulated and purposeful. Where Tyler got off on saying disgusting things, Ride’s rhymes are meant to disfigure the listener’s psyche and make them experience the depths of madness, not just laugh at it from afar.

Death Grips has found a way to take a somewhat tired style and approach it in a way that fresh and is actually worth discussing. The Money Store is an incredible debut LP, and if the band continues to push itself – and with a second LP titled No Love planned for the Fall – it could continue to be at the top of the pack by staying completely and utterly unrestrained.

Death Grips – The Money Store tracklist:

1.  “Get Got”
2. “The Fever (Aye Aye)”
3. “Lost Boys”
4. “Blackjack”
5. “Hustle Bones”
6. “I’ve Seen Footage”
7. “Double Helix”
8. “System Blower”
9. “The Cage”
10. “Punk Weight”
11. “Fuck That”
12. “Bitch Please”
13. “Hacker”

The artists formerly known as Hype Williams are by no means finished.

As if naming one’s band after a late-nineties music video director isn’t precarious enough–this duo have taken their faux mythology into new lands. Who’s to say whether there is anyone called Dean Blunt, if he robbed sixteen taxidermists of raccoons before going on trial and converting to the Nation of Islam, or if he has a femme fatale Berliner named Inga Copeland that tried out for FC Arsenal’s ladies squad before sitting down to press her rejection angst to an album called Black Is Beautiful whose cover is the verbatim logo of Ebony magazine. With this act, it doesn’t matter. The real is given as much weight as the fantastic. Most critics take it as posturing, a social commentary on our era of information inundation, inauthenticity and attention-deficit. And that’s possible. It’s also possible they’re having a wank. Problem is, no one knows the better. As Blunt told The Wire, “The best art has humor in it.”

The fifteen tracks, all but one of which are unchristened, range from thirty-five seconds to over nine minutes long, without any apparent rhyme or reason. From “1,” where a fading synthesizer note dims over free-jazzing drums, to “12” where Inga’s voiced is mercilessly chopped over jungle rhythms to “6” where gated Star Trek doors open and close (or at least hopefully that’s what it is) over pan-pipes for half a minute. Say nothing about its eccentricities–what these two have produced is flip, capable of eliciting pure and primeval joy. Don’t blink though, at one point “9” stops suddenly for a side-splitting sample of a talking head, “When white people tell other white people they can’t have sex, they become teenage rebels,” immediately resuming its clunky march over a disjointed “Never look back,” voice modulation.

Black is Beautiful is a rare case: A work of art done deliberately, provably deliberately, with all the irreverence, missteps and chaos of a poorly made album. It refuses to explain itself or reveal a motive on its part or on the behalf of its creators. Because of this, it falls into a territory where one’s reaction to it is inseparable  with one’s ethos on art. Most albums, even the bizzare ones, are filled with familiar elements–things like melody, structure, lyrics and sometimes even instruments, Black is Beautiful eschews just about all of the above. Looking for genres? Start with post-garage, post-hiphop, post-grime and basically enough posts to support a Christo/Jeanne-Claude installation. Even at its most torrential the album plays softly and for having no discernible geography  and seems against all odds to be synchronized, the way disjointed thoughts can be in a notebook. Nothing here seems to work; the tempos are hopelessly off, every keyboard is in need of a tune-up, no idea or thought is left to blossom completely. The listener leaves these album thoroughly uncatharsized. Black is Beautiful plays like the ramblings of a madman–but one who might just be on to something–or really, actually mad.  A soundtrack to predrinking is it not, but if in the future, illustrious reader, you find yourself with forty free minutes, it’s worth a plug and mustache-stroking contemplation.

In a field of tall ferns, half a dozen tigers lie sprawled on top of one another, dead. At the foot of the corpses, three women in traditional work dress stitch and string together their torn underbellies. This is the painting that accompanies the Aimee Bender short story that Carina Round claims inspired the album title. It’s bizarre, a little unnerving and even amusing in its blatant absurdity–an eclectic mix of emotions, all to be found in Tigermending. It’s been five years since her last full-length record Slow Motion Addict and for the thirty-three-year-old Los Angeles via Wolverhampton songstress it was “time and freedom to experiment and explore.” Part of her perennial gift is her ability to meld an infectious songwriting ear with exploratory surprise, she seems to inhabit a place just ahead of prediction.

For the lighthearted, Tigermending doesn’t open easily, “Pick up the phone/ I’m pregnant with your baby/I wanted you to know/ The dreams I’ve been having lately,” (“Pick Up the Phone”) and it doesn’t let down from this agitation for a while. Like a novelist trying to get past the first line, Round is competent once it’s out. The album blooms with flangering guitars and vocals, trembling basslines and strained effects. Horns, atonal pianos and a host of electronics inspire the stirring atmospherics of Tigermending. Debatably, this is Round’s most versatile, innovative and lyrically spellbinding effort to date. Though the artist is often compared to PJ Harvey and Patti Smith,  Tigermending takes more of its cues from the playbook of art rock, inhabiting a persona and forgetting the self. There are also elements of howling Smithean confession and maybe even classic soul with vampy melodies, descending horns and testimonial crescendo. She builds her energy until she’s positively shouting on the mournful, “You and Me,” while on “The Last Time” her gorgeous, tremulous lilt pours out half-baked, bad-good similes, “I hung like a tongue from my open-mouth window.”

The more traditional rocky belly of the album is dominated by warped, soaring guitar lines, stormy synthscapes and stomp-along beats. The shape of Tigermending is a little uneven, which is not to say Round doesn’t pull it off. It begins in nebulousness, melds into defiant outpouring and ends in grim, bittersweet reflection. Everyone loves a Brian Eno collaboration, but “The Secret of Drowning,” a churlish production done with Eurythmics alum Dave Stewart is near sublime use of ambience, a result that could not have happened without Round becoming embedded in the Los Angeles scene. Being among and collaborating with Left-coast artists has opened up her sound, making it deeper and multitudinously more intricate.

Round has a penchant for soul-bearing, no matter how ugly and unquaint that truth might be. What resonates is a sort of persistent disquiet, that would be sinister were it not for the artist’s even-handed confrontation of it. These songs assuage and speak to the listener. The excellent single, “Set Fire,” where Round incants in ancient tones over distant acoustic strumming, “Your words came down in tatters and flames/ And it’s the closest I’ve felt/ To a song destroying me,” suggests the effect. Even though Tigermending bottles up that signature Round darkness, it’s never without redemption. She has something powerful here, something under her hands, but it could be honed into something more.

Carina Round – Tigermending tracklist:

1. “Pick Up the Phone”
2. “The Last Time”
3. “The Girl and the Ghost”
4. “You and Me”
5. “Set Fire”
6. “You Will Be Loved”
7. “Marcel Marcel”
8. “Weird Dream”
9. “Mother’s Pride”
10. “The Secret of Drowning”
11. “Simplicity Hurts”

Neon Trees is a band comprised of five Mormons on the verge of adult contemporary who will remain a one-hit wonder if any songs from their new album fail to achieve notoriety like “Animal” did a few years ago. Until then, they’ll remain in the background as a pleasant and unique-sounding group of musicians.

The band has a sound that is beat-heavy and on the more electronic side of alternative rock. Led by scratchy vocalist Tyler Glenn, they possess an individuality and a spice of personality that every song emulates in its verses.  Their strength lies in their ability to choose a good beat to lead every song, a consistency throughout new Picture Show that their naïve first output did not.

If you give it a chance, Picture Show can be mesmerizing at times, full of energy and valiant effort that aims to produce a higher peak than previous album Habits did. The bulk of this new album is actually much nicer than their debut, an honorable success through a few years of touring and producing.

Perhaps the “Animal” of Neon Trees’ second album, “Everybody Talks” has all the elements necessary for a chart climber from the band. The most universally likeable song on Picture Show carries the story of a lust for a woman, full of careful descriptors and playful analogies. People might really like this song because it is considerably catchy and upbeat. As with most radio-friendly hits, though, “Everybody Talks” falls short of awe-inspiring wisdom. It’s fun though.

“I Am The D.J.” lands right behind “Everybody Talks” in likeability, closing the album on a light note with great style and glamour. Just as the first sparked a charming universal factor, “I Am The D.J.” is easy to tap your foot to but still lacking in the lyric department. It chimes “I am the D.J./You are the record I play/I will not scratch the surface/Does it still make you nervous?” and underwhelms emotionally but still stands out as a valiant audio effort.

Picture Show as a whole is confusing because when the music gets good and fun to hear, the words lack substance and deeper meaning beneath superficial motives. It works vice versa, too, where words are wise and fulfilling, they aren’t accompanied by the finest beats and melodies. There is no great balance at any point along the compilation and it becomes increasingly disappointing as the listener travels further through the album.

“Trust,” for example, is an insightful eye into the games of loyalty, is paired with some dark and dusty sounds that aren’t current or relevant or exciting as they passionately explain “the thing about trust.”

It’s hard to tell who Neon Trees were aiming to gear their tunes toward. Who listens to Neon Trees? Young hipsters? Moms and dads? Tattooed biker dudes? Generally, a band has a certain crowd that comes out to see their shows and buy their records but it’s hard to tell who does this for the Utah band. Their style is so individualistic that it doesn’t quite fit the alternative rock category yet still isn’t absurd enough to be considered anything else. Or perhaps they aren’t meant to be categorized at all. Judge for yourself as you buzz through Picture Show.

Neon Trees – Picture Show tracklist:

1. “Moving in the Dark”
2. “Teenage Sounds”
3. “Everybody Talks”
4. “Mad Love”
5. “Weekend”
6. “Lessons in Love (All Day, All Night)”
7. “Trust”
8. “Close to You”
9. “Hooray for Hollywood”
10. “Still Young”
11. “I Am the D.J.”

Just as Conduits are conducting an electrically charged approach to traditional guitar rock, they are also conducting a somewhat somber yet subtle survey of shoegazer tropes on their self-titled debut. A creation of guitarists JJ Idt and Nate Mickish, the Conduits’ fusebox was fully charged with the addition of Jenna Morrison on vocals, and the Omaha, Nebraska sextet also includes bassist Mike Overfield, keyboardist Patrick Newbery, and drummer Roger Lewis.

They have logged time with a corresponding half dozen fellow Cornhusker outfits that include Son Ambulance, The Good Life, Eagle Seagull, Neva Dinova, The Golden Age and Cursive, and are touring with the latter this spring. On paper, they seem to be billed as a supergroup of Nebraska indie rockers that run the gamut from the infinitesimally obscure to the almost “bubbling up from under,” but the reality is most likely more related to the burgeoning but possibly musically incestuous Omaha music “scene,” if it’s really ok to call it that.

The kick-off cut, “Top Of The Hill,” constructs shimmering structures from sheets of sheer guitar chords and layers Jenna Morrison’s lovely, breathy, echoey vocals on top. Listening to the song, it’s easy to close one’s eyes and imagine climbing to the top of that hill and looking down on a valley of sonic majesty. Unfortunately, they follow that age-old dictum to lead with their best song in such a way that the following cuts seem like something of a letdown. And that’s a shame, since the subsequent tracks are lovely as well, they’re just more finely textured with greater subtlety and require more deliberate, complete immersion. When a record starts out this good, it’s a tough act to follow. From the “Top” they recall the sprawling majesty and winsome vocal approach of The Boo Radleys’ “Giant Steps” single.

Within the slow-burn simmering of the record, vocalist Morrison runs the dynamic gamut from sweetly lilting to uttering banshee howls. On “Blood” she sounds like smooth songstress Sade, while on another track she could be the Siouxsie Sioux of The Banshees’ Screaming fame.

The laidback, Low-like ploddingness of “Well” allows her gorgeous, subtly aching delivery to grow, swell and soar; in contrast, “Misery Train” just dirges along contemplatively, but doesn’t really go anywhere, musically (“Last Dirge,” by comparison, is a simmering high point). Morrison’s breathiness is particularly pronounced and her vocal part is beautiful, but the song doesn’t have much direction.

“Limbs and Leaves” takes a while to get going too, but there’s a certain sinister spy theme hauntingness to the song; while it’s cloaked in atmosphere, it doesn’t get obscured or absorbed in it. It doesn’t have the driving, propellant rhythm incumbent in say, a Citizens Here and Abroad track, but it’s a lovely little sketch nonetheless. Thankfully, “The Wonder” picks up the tempo quite a bit and rollicks along, extending the “spy theme” vibe but elongating it into a hook-driven aria with a compelling syncopated backbeat.

Conduits don’t channel the “tsunami of sound” into their music like the similarly-minded group The Joy Formidable have, but one could see how their aesthetic approach could be considered similar. In addition, hints of early Chairlift can be heard, as well as their admitted inspirations Portishead, Spacemen 3, Spiritualized and Slowdive (the latter being an obvious touchstone for “On the Day”).

All in all, this may not be the best, brightest or newest band on the block, but Conduits show a lot of promise on their first full-length, and the record reveals more depth and loveliness with each listen. It may not make too many 2012 Top Ten lists, but just the same, if these songs pop up during a shuffle, they will be difficult to skip.

Conduits – Conduits tracklist:

1. “Top of the Hill”
2. “Misery Train”
3. “Limbs and Leaves”
4. “The Wonder”
5. “On the Day”
6. “Last Dirge”
7. “Blood”
8. “Well”

Since their debut full-length LP in 2005, San Francisco-based Loquat has only released two albums. After their 2008 release, Secrets of the Sea, keyboardist Ryan Manley and songwriter Earl Otsuka exited their relationship with the band. Remaining members, Kylee Swenson Gordon and husband Anthony Gordon recruited Chris Cooper and Chip Cosby to complete the group and return to music. During the recording of their third studio effort, We Could be Arsonists, Swenson Gordon faced the challenge of recording while pregnant which spanned almost the entire nine months. After the process, the group produced an impressive restructure.

After the long hiatus since highly-acclaimed Secrets of the Sea, the quartet has a lot to prove with a slant to impress a modernized pop crowd. We Could be Arsonists is more focused on a flashy production than lead-songstress’s lovely vocals. This angle seems appropriate because of Swenson Gordon’s baby bump and the two member swap. Following the more organically produced Secrets of the Sea, Loquats third release is effortlessly entertaining. Poppy electronic riffs of “Time Bending,” “We Are Arsonists” and “The Legion” are catchy as hell.

Title track, “We Are Arsonists” features Swenson Gordon’s feminine, yet edgy vocals in spiraling circles. Psychedelic guitar riffs echo in a dreamy state surrounding the hypnotic lyrics. Next track, “Monsters” showcases the pretty vocals seen more prominently in the group’s previous releases. This track is dreamy and lightly fluffed.

Distorted guitar and electro-rock melodies take over in “Rumbling.” The chick-rock anthem is reminiscent of angry 1990 girl bands. “Change of Scenery” follows suit with a lighter tone. Swenson Gordon lets her vocals shine in this album, shedding light on the vastness of her voice. She is even able to contribute to the piano-driven ballad “Kindling for Fire.” This track is deep and most easily translatable to Secrets of the Sea and 2005’s It’s Yours to Keep. But it’s the video-game intro of “Up Late,” that ensures Loquat is pulling all stops. The track is a wistful abyss of indie rock drum rolls and lullaby-like melodies. It is just enough dark, with a bouncy touch to really make the repeat button enticing.

Since the reconstruction of Loquat, the group reformed their style but didn’t lose the dreamy essence of their previous releases. It’s hard to be rigid, though, as it’s a seemingly different band all together. While the core still remains, and it obviously shows, the new contributions dusted in some new flavor. We Could be Arsonists isn’t as masterfully done as Secrets of the Sea, but it is a little more pleasing to listen to continuously.

Loquat – We Could Be Arsonists tracklist

1. “Time Bending”
2. “We Are Arsonists”
3. “Monsters”
4. “Seeds”
5. “Rumbling”
6. “Change of Scenery”
7. “The Legion”
8. “Walk Out”
9. “Kindling for Fire”
10. “Up Late”

After releasing the Songs for Singles EP in 2010, Miami trio Torche has released the full-length follow up to their 2008 breakout album Meanderthal. Perhaps oddly released on the Volcom Entertainment label, Harmonicraft is a self-produced affair with some help from mix master Kurt Ballou of Converge.

Good Night & Good Morning are a small and soft-spoken band from Chicago. Their newest album, Narrowing Type, is as close to a masterpiece as a few guys in their 20s can get.

The album is seven songs long and clocks in at 42 minutes. Narrowing Type is filled with songs that are pure ambience and then the more droney instrumental songs. Both of these play to the band’s talents. There is a deeply personal and intimate touch that comes from both the purely instrumental tracks as well as the ones with lyrics.

The vocal melodies are so natural and flow with the music that they feel more like an instrument. The highlight of the album is the two tracks that are paired together, “Median I” and “Median II.” The first is a dreamy interlude that cascades into ripples of reverb that blend right into “Median II” that feeds off waves from bands like My Bloody Valentine, while the rest of the song sounds like Sigur Ros producing the XX. These songs give the listener more to grab onto and are where the replay value of this album comes from.

The ambient songs are pretty, but at a certain point they sound like any other ambient track from any other artist. These tracks flush out the album as a whole and bring it full circle as a piece of art. The real gems are the songs like “Philadelphia” that seem to draw influence from bands like Atlas Sound and the instrumental organization of a very slowed down Explosions in the Sky.

Though the entire album as a whole is a great piece of music and art, it is geared primarily towards people that are heavily into noise and ambience in the vein of Brian Eno.

Most of the album consists of noises that sound like electronics slowly taking their last breaths. Sometimes there are guitar loops that trickle in and out of and in between songs while layered underneath walls and waves of distortion and fuzz.

Though Good Night & Good Morning aren’t inventing a new genre or doing anything extremely revolutionary, there is a certain freshness to their songs that can’t be denied. In an era where people can download an album faster than they can listen to it and have ten years worth of audio on their hard drive when they are twenty-years-old, it’s nice to see there are still bands who appreciate the art of making music.

It isn’t just a gimmick for Good Night & Good Morning or an excuse to get girls or get drunk. The songs on Narrowing Types are powerful songs that will move you and stick with you after you listen to them. It seems that instead of trying to be the most catchy song of the week Good Night & Good Morning are trying to catch listener’s attention with well-crafted music that actually means something and goes beyond your typical four chord songs about relationships and breaking-up.

However some of the songs on Narrowing Types very well might be about relationships and break-ups, but the listener can draw so much more out from these songs than your average indie-rock band you find on the internet.

Good Night & Good Morning- Narrowing Types Tracklist:

1. “Jill”
2. “Philadelphia”
3. “Key Studies”
4. “Median I”
5. “Median II”
6. “Japanese Thread”
7. “Abroad & Neutral”

Jack White, as you may or may not know, could not give one fuck whether you think he’s ‘the man’ or not. Maybe he did once, when he and his ex-wife were digging around in the dilapidated Detroit garage rock scene over a decade ago. Maybe he even did after the riff to end all riffs (“Seven Nation Army,” duh) catapulted The White Stripes to super-stardom and the band was put in the unenviable position of following that up.

But then Jack White wrote Get Behind Me Satan, and from then on it’s seemed pretty obvious that the bespectacled man in black has done whatever the hell he’s felt like doing. From too many supergroups to name (The Dead Weather, most recently) to movies (peep his cameo in Walk Hard as Elvis) to a record label (Third Man and it’s magic school bus) to the outright bizarre (ICP), White has allowed his considerable talent and miraculous work ethic to overpopulate himself in the music sphere with impunity.

To this end, Blunderbuss, White’s first solo record, could not have happened if it weren’t for a combination of the bizarre, the opportunistic and the insanely talented. Abandoned by RZA at a studio in Nashville with an entire session band on the payroll, White set about writing songs and performing the with a group of musicians he found freedom with. From this conceptual framework sprung forth Blunderbuss, basically a curated supergroup compilation with Jack White serving as de facto band leader. As one might expect, Blunderbuss sounds exactly as disjointed as it should – perfectly perfunctory in places, slyly inspired in others.

To assuage fears, White is certainly front and center here. He doesn’t exactly shred as much as Dead Weather enthusiasts or Icky Thump thumpers would like, but neither does he dive too far into what made Icky Thump the worst White Stripes album. Keyboards get a liberal, Get Behind Me Satan-esque workout, as in the opening organ shuffle “Missing Pieces” or the blues-folk of “Hypocritical Kiss” and “Weep Themselves to Sleep.” White’s verse surprisingly ties together the disjointed sounds of the record, playing mostly on the dangerous femme fatale’s that, were you to take White lyrics at there word, are a dangerous business for both genders alike.

But too much of Blunderbuss feels like odds and ends scraped together from disparate phases of White’s life. The excellent riffage of “Freedom at 21” leads into somewhat ill-advised country forays like the title track. The last three tracks wisely ooze a bit of sophisticate honky-tonk, while the pair of “Trash Tongue Talker” and “I’m Shakin’” are mere novelty, as if White wanted to prove something about his rock n’ roll intelligence. Why they stand out as the weakest point in the record is the same reason “Freedom at 21” is the stand out best: in the former, White wants to show you something about his coolness, sort of in the mode of Zooey Deschanel in She & Him. In the latter, White could care less whether you notice that he kind of raps, and is kind of awesome at it. Thankfully Blunderbuss closes on a bit of the weirdness, with the wacky blusterings of “Take Me With You When You Go,” but nevertheless trying to derive a cogent narrative from the record is surprisingly difficult.

But about that. What’s amazing about the majority of Blunderbuss is how much it turns the conversation of what a record means on its head. It would be easy to note that “Sixteen Saltines” sounds like White grasping at lost garage rock glory, but that notion is nowhere else on the record, so what gives? As the protagonist in the far too cute “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy” might say, “wherever you’ll be, you’ll be looking at me.” Blunderbuss isn’t an excellent, or even very strong, record. But it’s tossed off, slacker gaze that stares right back at you as you try and talk about it is evidence that you’re thinking too much about Jack White. He just wants you to enjoy a record he made, and to that end Blunderbuss is a relative success.

Jack White – Blunderbuss tracklist

1. “Missing Pieces”
2. “Sixteen Satlines”
3. “Freedom at 21”
4. “Love Interruption”
5. “Blunderbuss”
6. “Hypocritical Kiss”
7. “Weep Themselves to Sleep”
8. “I’m Shakin’”
9. “Trash Tongue Talker”
10. “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy”
11. “I Guess I Should Go to Sleep”
12. “On and On and On”
13. “Take Me With You When You Go”