Boarding House Reach by Jack White
Boarding House Reach is the third solo studio album by American rock musician Jack White. It was released on March 23, 2018, through Third Man, Columbia, and XL, his first solo studio album in nearly four years, following Lazaretto (2014). "Connected by Love" and "Respect Commander" were released together as the album's lead single on January 10, 2018, with "Over and Over and Over" following up as the second single on March 1. "Corporation" and "Ice Station Zebra" were also released as promotional singles. In March 2017, in an interview with The New Yorker, White revealed that he was in the process of writing new music. He had set up shop in a small apartment in Nashville, Tennessee, where he recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder which he purchased when he was fourteen. His goal was "to try to write songs where I can't be heard by the next-door neighbor. And I want to write like Michael Jackson would write — instead of writing parts on the instruments or humming melodies, you think of them. To do everything in my head and to do it in silence and use only one room." He spent several hours each day crafting in this space. On July 27, White announced that he was working on his third solo album, with recording sessions taking place in New York City and Los Angeles. In November, during a keynote speech at the Making Vinyl conference in Detroit, he offered an update on the album, saying that it was nearly completed and required only a few more additions for completion. He noted it as a "bizarre" record, saying "I've just got to let it settle. I need to listen to it by myself. I haven't been able to listen to it by myself for awhile." Boarding House Reach was recorded at Third Man Studio in Nashville, Sear Sound in New York City, and Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. White produced and co-mixed the album and played guitars, drums, organs, and synthesizers, while also acting as the vocalist. He performed alongside a brand new group of session musicians who had previously worked with several notable musical talents in the past. "Connected by Love" was the first song to be written for the album. The track "Over and Over and Over" was originally written in 2005 as a possible song for the White Stripes, one of White's former bands. It was also nearly recorded in collaboration with American rapper Jay-Z and almost recorded with another one of White's bands, the Raconteurs; the song was ultimately shelved until the recording sessions for 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 <i>rapped</i> through “Ice Station Zebra”. The cascade of ideas is dizzying, but two decades after White first committed himself to vinyl, his possibilities seem endless.
