Jack White has always been a very interesting melting pot when it comes to incorporating different styles of music together. In his previous band, The White Stripes; had incorporated the spirit and energy of punk with the aggressive guitar style that will be forever associated with blues music.
By the second half of their career, he’d continue this trend by constantly shifting and incorporating different styles of music into his own repertoire.
By the time that The White Stripes had split by 2011, White continued this trend with his solo career. But by far the biggest leap he’s ever taken is on his new album Boarding House Reach.
His first album in nearly four years, it sees White continuing to develop his musical journey but in such drastic measures that haven’t quite been seen before.
First off, the album has a very heavy leaning on electronic music in terms of the keyboards he uses in stuff like synthesisers. It creates a whole other mood in this album that suits it perfectly. It’s like letting a kid hyper on sugar and letting them play a keyboard. Not by skill set but more in the mentality it comes to when actually playing the instrument.
The first song, ‘Connected by Love’ is very interesting in because it doesn’t really set the tempo for what is going to be felt for the rest of the album. A quite soulful mellow song that proves White hasn’t lost anything in terms of being able to craft a song and the impact that it can have on the listener.
Other songs like ‘Over and Over and Over’ prove that White hasn’t totally abandoned his musical core. It was actually a song that was written by White for The White Stripes and it definitely feels like it could’ve fitted onto their classic album Elephant and along with that ‘Seven Nation Army’ and ‘Hardest Button to Button’ vibe.
Even on the closer ‘Whats Done is Done’ shows how eclectic the music is on the album. A mix between an electronic song with a gospel style in the way of its vocals, piano and organ add a mellow vibe that not only equally meets the opener ‘Connected by Love’ in impact but also in quality.
Even the closer ‘Humoresque’ has similarities with ‘Whats Done is Done’ in that it proves that no matter how loud Jack White is when he is playing, he can have just as much impact playing quietly and softly as he possibly can.
It’s the bit in the middle that is really the interesting part of the album and it may be the only fault of the album. Its a shifting and turning musical journey in the way that the songs cannot sometimes be appreciated because it’s like its always on edge, not wanting to stay on the one course for too long and wants badly to move on to the next thing. So on first listening to its kind of struggle to get into it.
But there’s nothing wrong with that. On first listen or two I felt it was a standard okay album. Probably after the fifth listen it really hit how great the album was. It’s very different to White’s career with The White Stripes because, with their albums, it more or less hit you straight away how great their stuff was, unlike this which is kind of a new thing I found while listening to Jack White’s music.
Overall this is the first great album I’ve listened to of 2018. The album also has White almost semi rapping on ‘Ice Station Zebra’. To know that the guy who wrote ‘Seven Nation Army’ can also spit a few bars then all I can say is what a time to be alive.
Highlights: Connected by Love, Corporation, Ice Station Zebra and Humoresque
Nostalgic Beat 