For Jack White, everything has been smoke and mirrors. If it wasn’t the mysterious relationship with his “sister,” or marital interlude with Karen Elson, it was the music. Between The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, White and his brand have more or less rocked their way into your consciousness. He’s even contributed to the Bond franchise in the form of “Another Way to Die,” the theme song from 2008’s Quantum of Solace. Yet, White continues to mystify. Working with everyone from to Danger Mouse to the Insane Clown Posse, he’s a hard man to pin down.
Enter Blunderbuss, White’s first solo outing. Scheduled to drop on April 24 via his very own Third Man Records, it is a turning point for the artist.
“It’s an album I couldn’t have released until now,” White said. “I’ve put off making records under my own name for a long time, but these songs feel like they could only be presented under my name. These songs were written from scratch, had nothing to do with anyone or anything else but my own expression, my own colors on my own canvas.”
Looking at his back-catalogue, White’s career has been nothing but him using his own colors on his own canvas. He formed The White Stripes in 1997 along side Meg White, and the band broke into popularity with the release of its 2001 critically acclaimed album White Blood Cells. The White Stripes then went on to release several groundbreaking follow-up albums including Elephant, Get Behind Me Satan and Icky Thump.
But this time around, White is a more mature raconteur, as time has given him a personal, introspective finding which he didn’t express before in his music. Examining the lyrics to his first single off of Blunderbuss, “Love Interruption,” listeners discover White isn’t singing about the joy of falling in love with a girl but merely pleading for an all-consuming love to take over his life.
White sings, “I want love to roll me over slowly/Stick a knife inside me and twist it all around.” As masochistic as his plead sounds, it is honest, as White is at an age at which he is jaded relationship-wise: White is too old to experience romance in the way that he did with Meg, as this time around, his mental template of a lover won’t be playing drums in his band. In fact, she will probably be his Lady Macbeth and will do much to destroy him, but at least he will feel that indescribable something once more.
“Love Interruption” sets the stage for the next era of White’s music career. If this track is any indication of what his sound has evolved into, fans of The White Stripes must take the new White in stride and remember that age has transformed him into a different person.
