"Blunderbuss"-Jack White: Review

By Spence Blazak

What kind of 21^st century man writes some of the best music of the new millennium with a woman, takes her name when they get married, and tells the press that they are so much in love that they are siblings, not spouses? The answer: the same man who could write an album like Blunderbuss.

Jack White, the patron saint of the Nashville music scene, was a hopeless romantic. When his second wife and him divorced in 2011, the couple threw a party to celebrate the fact that they would still be friends. This is the first original music that fans have heard from White since his divorce, and he has taken his music into a whole new territory.

As brilliant as Jack White’s music has always been, it has never been one thing in particular: personal. Sure, he wrote “Seven Nation Army” about the extreme anger and passion bubbling inside of a man wanting to participate in a protest, but that is still a broad subject matter. With Blunderbuss, White took a risk by letting his fans into his personal life. This risk paid off with an album that is an instant classic which will be played on this writer’s laptop for many times to come.

For the first time in his songwriting career, White isn’t in love with the idea of being in love. This resonates from the first keyboard trill of “Missing Pieces” to the last chord ringing out of “Take Me With You When You Go.” In “Sixteen Saltines,” the powerful opening lick raises the hairs on the back the listener’s neck as White denies jealousy of his ex’s new lover, even though his lyrics show the intrinsic haunt he feels.

On “Freedom at 21,” his pain is more tangible when the woman in question “cut off the bottoms of my feet/make me walk through salt” all with “a smile on her face.” Womankind has clawed at White’s heart, and as the saying goes, “Hell hath no furry like a Jack scorned.”

The most powerful track on the album is the single “Love Interruption.” It is a song that must be fully absorbed in every aspect. He sings, “I want love to change my friends to enemies/change my friends to enemies/and show me how it’s my fault.” Love, White’s old friend, is now a punk whom he refuses to acknowledge. Disillusionment fills his voice more and more with each verse as he howls sarcasm in Love’s face.

White has always played head games with his fans, in moments like when he performed a one-note concert in Canada, and the White faithful are finally getting what they always wanted: to know what’s on their idol’s mind. No beating around the bush of personal struggle, like with The Dead Weather or hiding behind glorious guitar playing, like with The White Stripes. Blunderbuss is essentially Jack White in his musical birthday suit.