Jack White – 'Blunderbuss' review
There were, broadly, two assessments of Meg White when she was in The White Stripes. The more romantic was that, despite her limited technical abilities, there was something uniquely energising and primal to her playing that completed Jack White, and without that they were just another blues band. The more practical one had her arriving on the drum stool by accident of relationship (be it romantic or familial), with mastermind Jack then keeping her there for cool points, the cost being a dilution of his extraordinary guitar skills with sub-par drumming. If the former is true, then Blunderbuss should be a husk of a record, proficient but dry. If it’s the latter, then to hell with the Meg myth.
Unfortunately for Ms White, Blunderbuss is a stormer. Unexpectedly, though, it leaves a lot of the White Stripes’ influences behind; here, White is seldom the guitar hero of old – far more of the record recalls the swing and shuffle of his newly adopted hometown of Nashville than it does the grit and dirt of Detroit. Indeed, several of the album’s highlights – the dangerously intense Love Interruption, the lilting country waltz title track and Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy, with its twinkling banjos and bar-room pianos – could’ve come straight from the Country Music Hall of Fame. That’s not to say White has totally abandoned his love of shredding: his spiky, tangy soloing is all over Bluderbuss, but in more restrained, concentrated bursts, nowhere more effective than on closing track Take Me With You, which begins as a doe-eyed piano stroll before evoking Jimmy Page over some (ironically) magnificent drumming. The combination is a successful one, and is repeated across the record, leaving Blunderbuss among the best records to carry White’s name.
9/10
