Jack White's Blunderbuss: Finally Something Rocks at the Top

As I wrote earlier in this post, I’m a total music junkie. No genre standard whatsoever, everything sounds good to my ears will pretty much do. Ray of Light, Creeping Death, Chiquitita, Smells Like Teen Spirit… Yet, I won’t deny that I miss seeing something (really) rocks hits the big mainstream again. Jack White’s Blunderbuss snatching the top of Billboard 200 is still nothing sort of psychedelic hype or grunge/ alternative explosion, nor does it really matter, but in this time of days, yeah, it sounds pretty cool.

Having some band or musician whose next album is something you impatiently look forward to surely is a fabulous thing. It’s a luxury. After losing that luxury for some years, around 2003, I found it again upon watching Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes for the first time on TV. (Yeah, our local TV stations are that slow.) And for the next couple of years, “Is there any new White Stripes album yet? So when?” became a recurring question. And when the albums did come, they didn’t disappoint me. Get Behind Me Satan in 2005 then Icky Thump 2007, their fifth and sixth studio albums. Jack and Meg White seemed getting better and better. But suddenly, on February 2, 2011, an official announcement was released saying that they would cease recording and performing music as The White Stripes.

I always think that Jack is not the kind of musician who can just sit and do nothing with his guitar. He is Rolling Stone magazine’s number 70 best guitarist of all time anyway. So, after the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, he finally released his own solo album, Blunderbuss, on April 24, 2012. The media, critics, and charts react pretty warmly.

Being spoiled with the White Stripes’ simple-raw-arse-kicking county/blues/garage rock, Jack’s solo debut is a bit…too much work. I mean, sure he wants to explore further into things he couldn’t have with his previous band projects—different music styles, beat, instrumentation—but I feel that in some tracks the arrangement is so “rich” it kinda hinder the energy of the songs. Or at least it complicates the way for the energy to show up.

However, it’s not a bad album. Not at all. Some of the tracks are absolutely brilliant. And what’s more important, all the great things about Jack White are still there. His blues-garage musical roots, his clever vocal takes, and his wicked guitar plays. All in all, he still rocks. And this time, for a while, he rocks at the top.

Here are my two favorites out of thirteen tracks in this album. Enjoy!