I really, really didn't want to dislike this album… When I heard that there was gonna be a follow-up to Blunderbuss, I was excited for more of the same, or at least a little more experimentation that could push forward the evolution of the Jack White sound. What I got was really… false advertising. When the first snippet of the title track came out it sounded PUNCHY, it came out with a bang. Distortion, grinding guitars, Jack's signature vocals and his hilarious take on singing Spanish lyrics and the violins, OH MY THE VIOLINS. I was excited, I was ready for a weirdly delayed “Freedom at 21”, and a grindy “Sixteen Saltines”, and a soulful “Love Interruption”. And instead of that we get five or six songs straight of nothing but Jack's attempt at country-rock.
The thing is, I kept seeing collaborations of Neil Young and him and seeing all the different influences that he's stated about his music, about the blues, about blues-rock, and I was thinking he could get people together to make a solid classic rock album with a star-studded cast. Instead we get something like this, Jack still thinking that DIY is something that can still be attained although you have a lot of room for production value and connections that could potentially put your album on the top of the charts.
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