Boarding House Reach
On robo-funk adventure “Get In the Mind Shaft,” Jack White recalls the wonder of first playing a piano chord by hitting three notes together. It’s a neat allegory for a record that feverishly forges disparate elements—hip-hop, country, gospel, electronic music, jazz—together to see what magic happens. Here, at his most playful, White obliterates any lingering notion of him as a garage-rock diehard. “Over and Over and Over” delivers a familiar but no less invigorating dose of high-voltage blues, but only after he’s successfully cross-pollinated rock and psychedelic funk (“Corporation”) and *rapped* through “Ice Station Zebra.” The cascade of ideas is dizzying, but two decades after White first committed himself to vinyl, his possibilities seem endless.
With the joy and wit all but absent from his songwriting, Jack White’s third solo album becomes a long, bewildering slog.
Although Jack White was the primary creative force in The White Stripes, the three albums he’s made since officially going “solo” have all been decidedly non-Stripes-like. Both Blunderbuss in 2012 and Lazaretto in 2014 were rooted in the primitive blues, garage rock, and rural folk music that White made with his…
Jack White may not be as relevant as he once was, but his ambition is still just as strong, twenty years on. That's more than most can say.
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Haters may hate. But White remains a rock and roll white guy who isn't afraid to wrestle with big issues.
Jack is and always has been a true weirdo with a brain that operates like no other. And here, he’s on gloriously eccentric form.
Also Courtney Marie Andrews 'May Your Kindness Remain' and Chris Smither 'Call Me Lucky'
Due to his affection for prewar music and myths, Jack White often gets pigeonholed as a blues-rock revivalist -- an assessment that isn't so much wrong as it is incomplete. Even in the earliest days of the White Stripes, White limited his aural palette with deliberate zeal, a practice he sustained through the Stripes as well as his first two solo albums. Boarding House Reach is where he expands his horizons and that discipline begins to fracture, and quite intentionally so. "Connected by Love" -- the album's opening track and first single -- is a rousing bit of arena rock and the only cut that could truly have appeared on either Blunderbuss or Lazaretto. Once that song draws to a close, White dives into a moody electronic meditation called "Why Walk a Dog?" -- an oddity that's quickly eclipsed by the hard funk of "Corporation," a song that marks the third different sound in as many tracks.
Jack White has always written weird songs, but before now, his preference for traditional rock and folk instrumentation has meant that he's...
Jack White was once the antithesis to rock 'n' roll excess. With The White Stripes, he produced sharp, minimalist rock songs that laughed in the face of the genre's extravagances. Even on his more lavish solo albums, White's writing was still taut and eff
Few artists in our current generation hold the mystique and intrigue of Detroit native Jack White. The multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer has
Jack White has described his new solo LP 'Boarding House Reach' as “bizarre”, and he’s not wrong. More concerning, though, is how lightweight it is.
Messy, uneven, and at times unlistenable, the album’s sheer audacity makes it utterly intriguing.
Jack White, the mad scientist control freak of rock and roll (a somewhat undisputed title since the death of Prince) is back, and his first true solo album...
Northern Transmissions reviews 'Boarding House Reach' by Jack White
Digital effects, spoken-word, a brave attempt at rapping … after two decades of uptight indie, White has loosened his artistic shackles and seems to be having fun
Misophonia – literally, a hatred of sound – is a medical condition linking anxiety and noise.
Rather than shift the centre of his universe, White extends its borders to incorporate daring new styles
The former White Stripe shows flashes of occasional brilliance in a bold experiment, review by Barney Harsent