Jack White has produced, collaborated on, recorded with and released music from a staggering array of acts through his Third Man Records imprint over the years, helping launch careers and revitalize others with his signature sound & stylings while throwing hijinks a’plenty. In keeping with his mischievous innovation, the bastard son of Orson Welles and Willy Wonka’s plans for Record Store Day were as crazy as they wee ambitious – and the crazy SOB pulled it off. But it wouldn’t be much of a stroke of genius without a kickass song, now would it?
Naturally, Jack’s got that covered. The RSD release is a live version of the title track to his new album Lazaretto, the hugely anticipated follow-up to 2012’s Blunderbuss. Once again, Jack turned Record Store Day into a trip to the proverbial chocolate factory of wonderment, with an in-studio performance followed by a rush to vinyl pressing, packaging and release, with a total time clocking in at about three hours and 21 minutes. We’d like to think Benny Hill theme music was playing as the process took place.
The results are a hell of a leap of promise from the odd instrumental of “High Ball Stepper”. Expected to serve as the proper first single for Lazaretto, the song is a whip-crack of funk with stomping urgency reminiscent of “Sixteen Saltines” or the Stripes’ “Icky Thump”. Any concern that we’d see a retreat from the days of Jack’s blazing blues-rock lashings and furious guitar-solo spaz-outs should’ve been laid to rest with the first half or Blunderbuss, but will be further eradicated upon release of “Lazaretto”.
A bright, high-energy track that centers on a repeated strut-riff, the song is a hip-shaker that stands alongside White’s most electrifying compositions. The devil of details makes the most delicious subtleties, whether via a quick-shimmy vibrato or tumbling-lyric melodies which leap into the chorus with “When I say nothing… I say everything”.
Jack frames the solo, a stage-staggering fit of squealing goodness, as what he’d say in a conversation with God – after lamenting that he’s been quarantined on the Isle of Man. “I had no time left / Time is lost / No time at all / Throw it in a garbage can / And I shake God’s hand / I jump up, and let her know when I can / This is how I’m gonna do it…”
And just when you think it’s over, the revival rides in on a creeping riff, and a wave of cymbal crashes & feedback-jitter guitar work frame many Jacks flooding in for a final melodic flourish. Then White’s vampire fiddler queen Lillie Mae Rische leads a Dixieland string run, and it sounds as if Jack’s previously gender-segregated backing-band architecture has done a bit of intermingling. No complaints here.
A lazaretto is defined as a quarantine and isolation hospital for people with potentially infectious diseases. If Jack is afflicted, the symptoms are deceptively glorious, signaling a new cut along the path of one of the most prolific, driven and talented frontmen of our time.
Lazaretto arrives 6/10 via Third Man – just before Jack’s headlining spot at Bonnaroo, which is the sweetest gift we could ask for heading into festival season.
