Style: Alternative rock; compare to White Stripes, The Raconteurs
Top tracks: “I’m Shakin’,” “Sixteen Saltines,” “Blunderbuss”
While ear-twisting six-string tones and riffs make appearances, Blunderbuss isn’t a “Jack White guitar album” by any stretch. Instead his solo debut is powered by atypical instrumentation, most notably from the keyboard family—but the cool cousins (e.g., Rhodes, slightly out-of-tune piano). The album casts a few more shadows than light thanks to some violent lyrical jaunts (“Love Interruption,” “Freedom at 21,” “Trash Tongue Talker”), but there’s whimsy, too. The best is “I’m Shakin’,” a 1960s doo-wop ditty that White reignites with a spare, guttural groove augmenting witty Samson and Delilah lyrical references. But don’t get too excited: In the blistering “Sixteen Saltines,” White insists that “the Lord’s joke is a boat in a sea of sadness.”
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