Lazaretto by Jack White
Lazaretto is the second solo album by Jack White. It was released on June 10, 2014 through White's own label Third Man Records in association with XL Recordings and Columbia Records. Sessions for the album began in 2012 during gaps in touring for White's Blunderbuss album. White told Rolling Stone in a February 2013 interview that he was working on "20 to 25 tracks." He explained of the new material, "it's definitely not one sound. It's definitely several. Like you heard in Blunderbuss, there're many styles there. I don't pick my style and then write a song. I just write whatever comes out of me, and whatever style it is what it is, and it becomes something later." He hinted during a January 2014 chat session with fans on the Third Man Records message board that he was almost done with the record. "I'm producing two albums this month, and finishing them," White wrote. "One of them is mine." The Vault, Third Man's exclusive fan club subscription service, released a limited-edition version of the album on blue-and-white vinyl. It was packaged with a 40-page hardcover book, a fold-out poster, a National Archives photo that appears throughout the album art, and a 7-inch featuring demo versions of two songs recorded in Mexico, "Alone in My Home" and "Entitlement", the finished versions of which appear on the album.
Even someone who’s never heard of The White Stripes would recognise the opening notes from “Seven Nation Army”, the lead-off track from the band’s sprawling and audacious fourth album, <i>Elephant</i>. Featuring Jack White’s pulsing riff and Meg White’s unflinching beat, the appropriately titled “Seven Nation Army” became a world-conquering hit, a song that’s served as a score for every sort of athletic event since <i>Elephant</i>’s release in 2003—and the tune that solidified The White Stripes’ status as one of the mightiest rock bands in the world. For most of the song’s nearly four-minute runtime, that low-end lick curls like a snake ready to strike, providing the platform for Jack to vent about all of the gossip that the duo’s nascent fame had rendered. “I’m going to Wichita/Far from this opera forevermore,” he sings, coming down from one of rock music’s most splenetic solos. “I’m gonna work the straw/Make the sweat drip out of every pore.” What follows for the next 50 minutes is arguably the premier expression of The White Stripes’ time as a band, thanks to <i>Elephant</i>’s blend of pile-driving rock songs and quixotic pieces, all of which reimagine just what Meg and Jack White could do. “Black Math” is a savage punk burner, dreamt up as a retort to a horrible high-school math teacher. “Hypnotize”, meanwhile, is a come-hither paroxysm, Meg’s drums pushing Jack toward his next paramour as if she’s anxious to offload her ex. And even while being knighted as rock’s next great saviour, Jack found vim for a tirade of the ostracised on “The Hardest Button to Button”. If you came to <i>Elephant</i> looking for the then-fabled Detroit noise-makers who pounded their instruments, the album did not disappoint. But the true pay-off of <i>Elephant</i>, the bulk of which was recorded without computers at London’s Toe Rag Studios, is what the Whites were willing to try—and how often they succeeded. Backed by a Hammond organ’s bass, there is Meg’s fairy-tale-like solo vocal turn during “In the Cold, Cold Night”, which is soon followed by the desperate blues of Jack’s “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket”. The duo conjures Queen on “There’s No Home For You Here”, and combines John Lee Hooker and pure noise-rock on the innuendo-driven “Ball and Biscuit”—the longest song the pair ever put to tape. When <i>Elephant</i> ends with “It’s True That We Love One Another”, a campy sing-along featuring the Stripes’ hero and spiritual forebear Holly Golightly, the future seems wide open for The White Stripes—and with it, the ballyhooed next act of rock ’n’ roll.
