Courtesy of Nasty Little Man
Jack White
Whatever it is that Jack White and his cadre of musical polyglots are infected with is definitely contagious—and that’s a good thing. The Detroit-by-way-of-Nashville trickster god brings his dirty foot-stomping party to the Fox on Sunday night in support of his latest effort, Lazaretto.
The word “lazaretto” is old and tragic: it’s a place of quarantine for those hopelessly infected with history’s gnarliest afflictions, particularly everyone’s favorite biblical flesh-rotter, leprosy. Nobody really gets out alive, but in White’s version, it’s a hell of a final funky party.
The record Lazaretto, released last month, is a contained contamination of multiple styles and influences, not quite like anything we’ve heard from White before, but undeniably his. It manages to sound old-timey and modern at the same time. White’s signature guitar and yowling urgent vocals, of course, are front and center. But the record features harps and fiddles, synthy bleeps, a Hammond organ and plenty of pedal steel.
The lyrics, with notes of longing and romance as well as disillusionment and disgust at being told what to do, arose from stories and plays penned by a 19-year-old White living in Detroit and in the throes of first love, according to the album’s press release. In 2012, he discovered the old writings in an attic and chopped them up, rearranging them into their current 11-song iteration. The original stories, save for one that appears in the liner notes, have been destroyed.
White, who famously whips through production in a few weeks, took a year and a half to make Lazaretto, his second solo effort and the 45th record he has produced. Supporting him on the record are the all-male Buzzards and the all-female Peacocks.
In a lengthy profile in Rolling Stone in May, former upholsterer and furniture fan White showed off his meticulously arranged Third Man Studio at his home in Nashville. White and the bands and other musicians from his Third Man Records recorded Lazaretto there, analog on two locked-together 8-track reel-to-reel recorders. He told Rolling Stone that the bands gelled musically and got into a groove while supporting him on his first solo effort, Blunderbuss. The collaboration included live performances and sessions during gaps in the touring schedule.
The record opens with “Three Women,” a country-fried piece of ’70s sleaze with an organ and piano calling back and forth to one another. The “lordy lord” refrain invites us to clutch our pearls at White’s seemingly louche ways. He says “it took a digital photograph to pick which one I like” of the red, blonde and brunette ladies from California, Detroit and Nashville. The lyric stands out as an anachronism in a song that could otherwise easily be an artifact from an era when not everyone had a professional-quality camera in their pocket. (In the Rolling Stone piece, White railed against crowds at shows who can’t clap because they have a “texting thing” in their accursed hands.)
If the title track “Lazaretto” doesn’t make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, maybe you’ve already succumbed to that nasty case of leprosy. White’s staccato vocals, including a bit of Spanish, hold their own against Moog and Korg synths and fancy fiddle work. The first-person tale almost reads like a classic hip-hop boast track.
“Temporary Ground” is a twangy, plaintive country croon while “Would You Fight For My Love?” is haunting, a meditation on the insecurity that comes with consuming love. The sunshiny piano of “Alone In My Home” borders on schmaltzy, but it works, almost recalling some of Scott Walker’s less obviously bizarre-o but still weird digressions. The layered voices giving a trippy start to “That Black Bat Licorice” give way to a woman with a voice and cadence you could Charleston to, if you were so inclined.
The rococo setting of the Fox will make a great setting for whatever White’s got up his sleeve. New Orleans singer/songwriter Benjamin Booker opens the show, which starts at 7:30. At press time, “very few tickets remain” for the show, according to the Fox’s website. Get ‘em while you can.
Fox Theatre, 527 N. Grand, 314-534-1111, fabulousfox.com.
