Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
It can’t be a coincidence, no matter how good The White Stripes were, and they were rather first-rate for the vast majority of songs that they produced, that Jack White has just got better and better as a musician and lyric writer since those long gone halcyon days. His latest solo album, Lazaretto, is one of such quality that it is hard to ignore. The American Rock/Country/Celtic vibe hybrid is a fascinating delve into the mind of one of America’s real musical icons of the last 15 years that at times you have to wonder if the man will ever bother writing an autobiography, for everything you think you want to know is played out in the lyrics of his enormous body of work.
Lazaretto fulfils its promise very early on; in fact it is one of those rare albums that if it had been half finished it still would have made an excellent E.P. Of course the listener would have been robbed of around 20 minutes of material but they would have bought into it. It is a stunning combination of wilful lyrics and the muscle of the extraordinary well placed note, the addition of great musicianship by Jack White and the chosen company, including Lillie Mae Rische, Dominic Davis, Timbre Cierpke and Olivia Jean.
Stand-out tracks such as Alone In My Home and its feelings of embittered 21st Century isolation and rejection, the realism of the album title track and the truth of words and the power of how they can be said and the even greater authority of terms and words that left out of a conversation; the way in which you can only understand that it’s what people don’t say that can damn you, the lusciousness of Entitlement and the direction that many will have you toe the line that makes them unhappy just so they don’t feel lonely in their self-loathing and despair and the tremendous That Black Bat Licorice, all make Lazaretto an album of genuine warmth and outrageous ability.
Whilst Jack White has been lurking in the musical playground for such a long time and has produced song after song, track after track of creative insanity, of joyful artistic value and more than often truism that catch the listener unawares, with Lazaretto there can finally be no doubting that the man just offers more to music that a catchy number, a great video or the enhancement of people’s imagination. He is one of America’s all-time greats. Don’t let the album pass you by, don’t blink and let it vanish before your eyes, blink and you will regret it.
Ian D. Hall