Reviews
Jack White’s evangelism on behalf of vinyl threatens to eclipse his stature as a rock star. The 12 inch ‘ultra LP’ edition of his second solo record features a floating ‘angel hologram’, hidden songs and a ‘locked groove’, an idea inspired by the original edition of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper.
Rather than promote the release in the traditional fashion — by giving interviews and performing on TV — two weeks ago he turned up on the Jimmy Fallon show helping Neil Young record a song straight to vinyl (Young sang, White busied himself in his vintage 1947 Voice-o-Graph recording booth). Increasingly his actual recording career has started to resemble a quaint afterthought.
Or so received wisdom would have you believe. However, fears the ex-White Stripes man might be too busy proselytisng to devote himself to his new album dissipate the moment you slap on Lazaretto. It’s a barnstormer — arguably one of the finest White has put out.
Even listened to via an internet stream — a medium the artist no doubt loathes — the record comes out swinging. Opener ‘Three Women’ mashes vintage keyboards and provocatively bonkers lyrics (“I’ve got three women, red, blonde and brunette’); the title track harks back to the skewed blues White cranked out with the White Stripes.
While his debut solo LP was clearly informed by his divorce from model Karen Elson, here he seems reluctant to wear his heart on his sleeve. The bulk of the emotion is in the music rather the lyrics: there’s a keening quality to the violin at the start of ‘Would You Fight For My Love?’; ‘Alone In My Home’ and ‘I Think I Found The Culprit’ veer from introspective to frenetic and back again.
More comfortable glancing over his shoulder than forging onwards, White recycles familiar tropes and cliches with skill, passion and economy. Fans will love Lazaretto — most everyone else will consider it a charming distraction.
Star Rating: 4/5
The conventional wisdom about jangle-pop is that it’s music for summer, a complement to the sunshine and the dreamy, wistful longing that sunshine induces in us.
Jangle-pop legends, The Go-Betweens, even had a name for it — the “striped-sunlight sound”. New Jersey band, Real Estate, are the latest merchants in ‘striped-sunlight’ and in Whelan’s they disprove the cliche. Jangle-pop is never better than when performed in an intimate space to a packed crowd. The music may put you in mind of the sun, but only as something that gives life while remaining forever out of reach. Playing feverous, jangling guitars in a small room for a bunch of people is simply a way of bearing that poignancy.
If this all sounds a little pretentious, that’s not out of step with Real Estate’s own shtick. Their glorious, downbeat surf-rock is poppy as hell and full of gripping passion, but it’s also shot through with a subtle intellectual detachment. When Martin Courtney sings the key refrain in ‘Crime’ (“I don’t want to die, lonely and uptight”) early into the set, you realise that this is a mantra not just for the band, but for jangle pop. This music is not just “with feeling”, it’s about feeling.
‘Crime’ is one of many songs from the new album, Atlas, that features in the set. And it’s an indication of how good an album it is that these songs — ‘Had to Hear’ and, especially, ‘Primitive’ — can mix it with the big hits from their previous album, Days. Nevertheless, the latter still provokes the biggest response from the audience, with the crowd singing the oh-oh-oh chorus back to the band with manic enthusiasm.
Shouts for ‘Green Aisles’ prompt bassist Alex Bleeker to retort “You’re just saying that because you’re Irish” and it adds a strange, emerald dimension to the tune when it does finally get an airing. Late in the set, both ‘The Bend’ and ‘Out of Tune’, with its sedate nod to Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’, provide a change in tempo, exposing the general ‘sameness’ of the band’s tunes.
There are few bands writing songs as good as Real Estate’s, but a little more range in the sonic palette would not go amiss. Still, when presented with pop perfection of this order, it seems utterly churlish to quibble.
Star Rating: 4/5
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