New Jack White Album “Lazaretto” Kicks.

June 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Jack White's "Lazaretto".

Jack White’s “Lazaret­to”.

It’s hard to believe that this is only Jack White’s sec­ond solo album. True, the White Stripes only offi­cial­ly dis­band­ed in 2011, but their last album, Icky Thump was way back in 2007.

It’s hard to believe because in the inter­im he seems to have become a one man music mak­ing machine.

There was The Racon­teurs, the band he formed with Bren­dan Ben­son and co. The Dead Weath­er, the one he put togeth­er with Ali­son Mosshart from the Kills and Dean Fer­ti­ta from Queens of The Stone Age. The won­der­ful­ly atmos­pher­ic album Rome, pro­duced by the sim­i­lar­ly ubiq­ui­tous Dan­ger Mouse and Daniele Lup­pi (reviewed ear­li­er here). Plus the small mat­ter of Third Man Records, the record label he formed and runs seem­ing­ly entire­ly on his own.

So far his Nashville stu­dio has played host to Wan­da Jack­son, Lau­ra Mar­ling, Loret­ta Lynn, First Aid Kit (reviewed ear­li­er here), Dri­ve By Truck­ers and Beck as well as pro­duc­ing reis­sues of Char­lie Pat­ton, Blind Willie McTell and Rufus Thomas. Oh, and his crack­ing first solo effort, Blun­der­buss from 2012, reviewed ear­li­er here.

The White Stripes in all their pomp with "Elephant".

The White Stripes in all their pomp with “Ele­phant”.

Lazaret­to his sec­ond is, in the best pos­si­ble sense, a great­est hits com­pi­la­tion of the many dif­fer­ent musi­cal moods and gen­res that he’s drawn to.

There’s the aus­ter­i­ty and rigour of the White Stripes, the more expan­sive and relaxed coun­try rock of the Racon­teurs, and that con­stant pur­suit and explo­ration of the roots and rhythms of his Amer­i­can musi­cal her­itage that’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly cen­tral to every­thing he does.

In this, and in his con­stant rest­less­ness, that sense of being for­ev­er dri­ven to gaze ever fur­ther afield, and ever more deep­er with­in, we final­ly have a musi­cian gen­uine­ly capa­ble of pick­ing up the man­tle of his friend and musi­cal men­tor Bob Dylan.

White’s the real deal. And Lazaret­to, as you’d expect, is gold.

You can see the title track­’s video Lazaret­to here.

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Bob Dylan’s Triumphant Fourth Act Continues with “Tempest”.

September 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

First came the trou­bled and won­drous­ly angry young man of the 1960s. Then there was the old­er and wis­er and all too wound­ed soli­tary fig­ure of the 70s. Then, even more remark­ably, he re-emerged for a third incar­na­tion with Oh Mer­cy in 89 and then with Time Out Of Mind.

And if that weren’t enough, he burst forth for a fourth time, back on to the scene and into rel­e­vance in the 00s with an explo­sion of activity. 

Four albums (so far) with Love and Theft (01), Mod­ern Times (06), Togeth­er Through Life (09) and now Tem­pest. The extra­or­di­nar­i­ly can­did Chron­i­cles Vol­ume One (04).  Scors­ese’s doc­u­men­tary. And of course the peer­less Theme Time Radio Hours (see here for ear­li­er review).

If you want to under­stand where his lat­est album Tem­pest is com­ing from, and how he arrived at it, you need to go back to Chron­i­cles and its fourth chap­ter on “Oh Mercy”.

It had nev­er occurred to me that, by the 1980s, Dylan might have been every bit as dis­ap­point­ed with what he’d been doing with him­self for the pre­vi­ous fif­teen years or so as his legion of fans were. Nobody, it tran­spires, was quite as dis­il­lu­sioned with the path that he’d cho­sen to go down than he him­self was.

“There was a miss­ing per­son inside of myself and I need­ed to find him.”

He says at the begin­ning of the chap­ter and we don’t so much as fol­low him as he recalls where he was then. Rather we’re there with him, in real time, as he bur­rows deep inside in the hope of dis­cov­er­ing the source of his turmoil.

” I felt done for, an emp­ty burned-out wreck…  I’m a ’60s trou­ba­dour, a folk-rock rel­ic, a word­smith from bygone days… in the bot­tom­less pit of cul­tur­al obliv­ion. I was what they called over the hill.”

Until all of a sud­den, out of absolute­ly nowhere, he stum­bles into a jazz joint and has one of those near-myth­i­cal, Joycean epipha­nies. And to his aston­ish­ment, where he needs to be going, musi­cal­ly, and what he needs to do to get there are glo­ri­ous­ly and crys­tal clear. And he begins the jour­ney out of his self-sculpt­ed Sty­gian gloom and back into the light.

“I had a gut feel­ing that I had cre­at­ed a new genre, a style that did­n’t exist as of yet and one that would be entire­ly my own.”

It would take him years to get there, that much was clear.

“I wished I was at least twen­ty years younger, wished that I had just dropped on the scene all over again.”

But for the first time in years, he was pal­pa­bly excited.

“I was antic­i­pat­ing the spring, look­ing for­ward to step­ping out on the stage where I’d be entire­ly at once author, actor, prompter, stage man­ag­er, audi­ence and crit­ic com­bined. That would be different.”

In ret­ro­spect, the next cou­ple of albums, Oh Mer­cy and Time Out Of Mind were not so much the result of that new approach as they were sta­tions on the way. 

It was only with the cur­rent batch that that des­ti­na­tion had tru­ly been arrived at. And Tem­pest is the lat­est, and there­fore the best exam­ple of where that was. 

There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view he gives with Mikal Gilmore in the Sep­tem­ber issue of Rolling Stone. You can get a taster of what’s in it here.

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Filed Under: Books, Music Tagged With: , , ,

The New Yorker Magazine, A Beam of Light Illuminating Innumerable Worlds.

August 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The New York­er staff writer Jon­ah Lehrer resigned in July, after even­tu­al­ly being forced to admit that a num­ber of the quotes he’d attrib­uted to Bob Dylan in his best sell­ing book Imag­ine: How Cre­ativ­i­ty Works had been made up by him.

You can read about it here in The Wash­ing­ton Post, or you can get the full account of pre­cise­ly how he was unmasked by the man respon­si­ble, Michael C. Moyni­han, in his fas­ci­nat­ing piece in The Tablet, here.

Inevitably, some peo­ple have sug­gest­ed that this could be as dam­ag­ing for The New York­er as Jayson Blair was for The New York Times after sim­i­lar behav­ior there. 

But Lehrer’s “lies” were in his best sell­ing book, not the mag­a­zine. And if any­thing, what both cas­es point to is how increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult it is to get away with that kind of dis­hon­esty in this day and age. Espe­cial­ly when you write for a pub­li­ca­tion like The New York­er, which is so just­ly famed for the qual­i­ty of its writ­ing and the metic­u­lous care with which each and every piece is put together.

I’ve been sub­scrib­ing for about ten years now, and I waft about the place in a per­ma­nent state of won­der at the qual­i­ty of each and every issue.

The July 9th and 16th edi­tion for instance con­tained the fol­low­ing (there are 47 issues every year so some of the hol­i­day issues cov­er two weeks, instead of the usu­al one):

There was a fas­ci­nat­ing if inevitably depress­ing overview by Dex­ter Filkins of where Afghanistan is after ten years of US occu­pa­tion, and what’s like­ly to hap­pen there after they leave in 2014. 

At over 10,000 words long, there are few if any oth­er pub­li­ca­tions in the world pre­pared to pro­vide their writ­ers with that kind of win­dow, and to give them the funds need­ed to con­duct the sort of research a piece like that demands.

Then there was a piece by Michael Specter on Oxitec and the genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mos­qui­tos that they’ve released into cer­tain care­ful­ly con­trolled envi­ron­ments in the Caribbean and, now, in Brazil. These have been genet­i­cal­ly designed to self-destruct.

What will the unfore­seen con­se­quences be of releas­ing crea­tures cre­at­ed by man in the lab­o­ra­to­ry into the envi­ron­ment? On the oth­er hand, very unusu­al­ly, mos­qui­tos appear to exist for the sole pur­pose of reproducing. 

They don’t seem to be part of any­thing else’s diet, and the only crea­ture they seem to rely on is us. And they’re respon­si­ble for half the deaths in the his­to­ry of human­i­ty. So sure­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty of elim­i­nat­ing them is some­thing to be welcomed?

Nathan Heller had a piece on the uber-hip TED talks and their mes­sian­ic advocates. 

And there were won­der­ful­ly illu­mi­nat­ing and qui­et­ly mov­ing extracts from the diary kept by the Amer­i­can writer Mavis Gal­lant as she strug­gled to bal­ance being a woman, a writer, and an Amer­i­can try­ing to eek out a liv­ing in the detri­tus that was left of Europe in the after­math of the II World War.

Then there are their sta­ble of crit­ics. Antho­ny Lane on cin­e­ma, Alex Ross on clas­si­cal music, Judith Thur­man on fash­ion and Peter Schjel­dahl on art, to name but four of their unflap­pable titans. Plus the finan­cial page, their Shouts and Mur­murs (Joel Stein was par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny in this issue), their car­toons and of course their fiction.

It’s a slow week when I man­age to fin­ish read­ing an entire issue in any giv­en week, and the short sto­ry that they pub­lish is usu­al­ly, alas, an inevitable casu­al­ty. But I make an excep­tion for William Trevor, Junot Diaz (who had a piece in the fol­low­ing issue), Alice Munroe, Colm Tóibín and any of the old­er pieces by Updike or Nabokov that they occa­sion­al­ly publish.

It is by a coun­try mile the best writ­ten, most metic­u­lous­ly researched and impec­ca­bly curat­ed pub­li­ca­tion in the world. And at a lit­tle over $100 a year for a sub­scrip­tion, it’ll cost you bare­ly two Euro a week. If you’ve any curios­i­ty at all, about any­thing under the sun, you should treat your­self now.

And so what if you don’t man­age to fin­ish read­ing it (or even open­ing it) every week. Your read and unread copies will be greed­i­ly wel­comed by friends and fam­i­ly alike.

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Filed Under: The Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Dexys’ “One Day I’m Going To Soar” Triumphs.

June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

When news sur­faced of the return of Kevin Row­land and Dexys, they of the Mid­night Run­ners, there was an under­stand­able air of scep­ti­cism. Not anoth­er mid­dle-aged has-been try­ing to relive past glo­ries and cash in on a dusty back cat­a­logue. But very quick­ly, word got out that this was the real deal. An actu­al return to form.

One Day I’m Going To Soar is the fourth album from Dexys and their first since Don’t Stand Me Down in 1985, the inevitably doomed fol­low-up to the all-con­quer­ing Too-Rye-Ay 27 years ago.

The lat­ter had pro­duced the world-wide sen­sa­tion “Come On Eileen”, the best sell­ing sin­gle of 1982. Not to men­tion of course the Van Mor­ri­son cov­er “Jack­ie Wil­son Said”, anoth­er hit sin­gle which they per­formed so mem­o­rably on TOTP while hold­ing a por­trait of the Scot­tish darts heart-throb Jocky Wilson.

Incred­i­bly, to the com­plete shock of every­one work­ing in the music indus­try, as soon as they had achieved their overnight suc­cess Dexys prompt­ly imploded.

In fair­ness, of all the peo­ple sud­den­ly thrust into the lime­light, Row­land was prob­a­bly the least well equipped to cope with its glare. And after the tra­di­tion­al sack­ing of band mates, falling out with record labels and descent into drug addic­tion, he even­tu­al­ly pro­duced the ques­tion­ably hon­est solo album My Beau­ty for Cre­ation Records (imme­di­ate­ly before they implod­ed) in 1999. That’s him on its cov­er sport­ing a fetch­ing dress.

So it was to every­one’s amaze­ment and, frankly relief that the British music press began to report in May that the new Dexys tour was some­thing of a sen­sa­tion. The shy but ever reli­able Simon Price summed up their reac­tion in his Inde­pen­dent On Sun­day piece here.

And what all the fuss was about became blind­ing­ly obvi­ous when they appeared on Lat­er with Jools Hol­land where they began, ballsi­ly, with a per­for­mance of “Come On Eileen” which you can see here. That’s how you take the dry air of a tele­vi­sion stu­dio and set the build­ing on fire.

Essen­tial­ly a con­cept album, One Day I’m Going To Soar cen­tres around the five tracks that chart Row­land as he falls hope­less­ly in, and then just as unex­pect­ed­ly and as inex­plic­a­bly out of love with the object of his desire.

Lyri­cal­ly, it’s rem­i­nis­cent of Dylan in the ear­ly 70s. But when the lat­ter sang love is all there is, it makes the world go ’round, it was easy to miss quite how pro­found a real­iza­tion this was, despite com­ing from one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed lyri­cists of the 20th cen­tu­ry as it was deliv­ered in such an off-hand manner.

There’s no mis­tak­ing the pain and heartache that have led Row­land to exact­ly the same con­clu­sion. You can hear it in that still remark­able voice, and it’s made all the more pal­pa­ble by his appar­ent inabil­i­ty to hold and hang on to love.

Bru­tal­ly hon­est, but glo­ri­ous­ly expan­sive musi­cal­ly speak­ing, there are any num­ber of echoes of the ear­ly and mid 70s through­out, from the Styl­is­tics and Sylvester to Sly and The Fam­i­ly Stone. But the prin­ci­ple con­stel­la­tion is still Van Mor­ri­son. And it’s one that Row­land and Dexys are com­fort­ably capa­ble of liv­ing with. A tri­umphant return and a stel­lar album.

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“Blunderbuss” by Jack White, verily a Prince Amongst Men.

May 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Jack WhiteJack White is Bob Dylan’s much younger and much more indus­tri­ous baby broth­er. Incred­i­bly, he very near­ly has the great man’s depth of vision and musi­cal scope, but unbur­dened by the weight of mes­sian­ic adu­la­tion, nice and qui­et­ly he’s liv­ing the musi­cal dream.

Glob­al­ly speak­ing, the White Stripes were lit­tle more than A N Oth­er gui­tar band mak­ing a rea­son­ably good liv­ing doing their thing. With­in the world of music though, they were a phe­nom­e­non. A blind­ing­ly bright light­en­ing bolt that lit up the night skies in a flash of uncom­pro­mis­ing, sear­ing brilliance.

White took that suc­cess and ran with it. He formed a cou­ple of satel­lite bands, The Racon­teurs and The Dead Weath­er, launched his record label Third Man Records, and in 2009 bought a build­ing in Nashville which he trans­formed into a record­ing hub. 

There he’s pro­duced LPs and sin­gles (on vinyl of course) for the likes of Loret­ta Lynn, Wan­da Jack­son, First Aid Kit (reviewed here), Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Tom Jones and Alaba­ma Shakes (reviewed here) as well as duet­ing with Norah Jones for three of the tracks on Dan­ger Mouse’s Rome (reviewed here).

But last year The White Stripes offi­cial­ly called it a day. And then a few months lat­er, White and his wife Karen Olson split up, mark­ing the occa­sion, char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, with a divorce par­ty. So this is his first out­ing as a sin­gle man. And there were real­ly only ever two pos­si­ble outcomes. 

Either the Stripes depend­ed for their mag­ic on some intan­gi­ble alchem­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of both Meg and Jack. Or, the most potent force in rock will always be Jack White with who­ev­er it is that he’s hap­pens to have paired him­self up with that par­tic­u­lar morn­ing. Blun­der­buss puts that dilem­ma to bed once and for all.

It’s intrigu­ing, not to say gen­er­ous, of White to insist that it was Meg who wore the trousers in the band, as he does in Josh Eells’ superb inter­view in the NY Times here – sit­ed in Pitch­fork’s gen­er­ous review here, not with­stand­ing their skimpy 7.8.

But it’s blind­ing­ly obvi­ous that it was he who was the band’s engine, its fuel, trans­mis­sion and uphol­ster­er. And Blun­der­buss is an impres­sive amal­ga­ma­tion of all of the musi­cal avenues he’s been explor­ing in all of the many musi­cal projects he’s been involved with to date.

Accord­ing to the inter­view he gave to All Songs Con­sid­ered here, he kept two sep­a­rate back­ing bands on hold, an all-male one and an all-female one. And one of the many plea­sures that the album affords is try­ing to spot which one is which.

I’d have a small wager that the funky groves of I’m Shakin’ bespeak a female troupe, and not just because of the lush, Spec­tor-esque female back­ing vocals, includ­ing, again char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly (of them both) his now ex-wife Olsen. 

Whilst it’s impos­si­ble not to con­clude that the pri­mal propul­sion of the majes­tic sin­gle Six­teen Saltines is the work of undi­lut­ed machis­mo – and quite cor­rect­ly, White posi­tioned this as his track 2. The album would have been quite over­whelmed by it had he begun with it.

This is a prop­er piece of work from a very seri­ous musi­cian indeed. Quite sim­ply, the man’s royalty.

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Filed Under: Music Tagged With: , , , , ,
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