Boarding House Reach Review: Jack White is having conspicuous fun getting on with the next stage of his career

By Ed Power

[rating]4[/rating]

Jack White hasn’t been in a hurry to shed his reputation as rock ’n roll’s last great eccentric in the lead up to his third solo album. In a recent Rolling Stone interview he revealed that he collects old mental asylum ledgers and that a brief conversation with comedian Chris Rock plunged him into a funk of existential despair (Rock told him that “nobody cares” about the vintage process by which White creates his music).

He likewise goes over old ground on Boarding House Reach, which feels like a loopy re-make of his mostly excellent previous records rather than a foundation-shaking reinvention. ‘Over and Over and Over’ is a fuzzbox symphony that, as with all of White’s best work, sounds both flippant yet weighed down with profundity (it additionally features from free-form bongo playing — a departure from the minimalism of the White Stripes).

Also full of fizz, fuzz and attitude are ‘Why Walk a Dog?’ — in which he wonders about the point of indeed walking dog and the clanking Ice Station Zebra, which opens — but mercifully does not persist — with White delivering his lines in a abrasive rap.

Idiosyncrasy is a recurring trope. Veteran White Stripes fans may be reminded of that duo’s Icky Thump — a provocatively bonkers outing that waxed wacky at every opportunity (though even that LP stopped short of hip hop).

It seems like a lifetime ago since a figure such as White — essentially Tim Burton’s idea of a retro rocker — could be considered an entertainment industry icon. That moment has now passed due to pop’s domination and rock’s dramatic retreat. But White is nonetheless having conspicuous fun getting on with the next stage of his career, as the outsider whose, much like Prince in his later years, clearly considers it is his duty to proselytise on behalf of a genre tumbling towards obscurity.