Jack White
No Name
THIRD MAN
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Those of us who’ve been waiting for Jack White to make something as brutal, weird, and original as his work as one half of The White Stripes and their final bow (2007’s Icky Thump) were more than just a little jealous to hear that he’d given it all away for free (at first) exclusively to shoppers at his Third Man Records locations in Nashville, Detroit, and London. But those of us who scoured the internet in late July were ultimately treated to the seared-black and blunt blues of No Name as we look forward to the opportunity to hold something in our hands that didn’t sound remotely like his unfocused 2022 full-lengths, Fear of the Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive.
The immediate joy, then, of finally hearing the white-label No Name’s official release is its grime-encrusted glory, its heavily salted, ugly-beautiful garage blues, and the raw, rough way that the entire self-produced package comes at you like a spiky Japanese cucumber slapping you hard in the face, repeatedly, for 13 songs in 43 minutes. No Name is something akin to the free-noise abandon of The Stooges’ Funhouse with the worried-man bile and raging, holy coil of Albert King. Yet No Name is simpler and plays straighter than any of the lofty comparisons I might present.
The vocalist White brings his usual mad, churchy preach and arcane love chatter to the woofing proceedings of “Bless Yourself” and “Bombing Out,” while offering up white-hot, fast-paced guitar scorching on “What’s the Rumpus?”—all as his drummer Daru Jones and bassist Dominic John Davis pound down the gutsy, bluesy pace. You could go lower in terms of the deep, dark blues that reside within “Underground,” but I wouldn’t advise it without a doctor’s supervision. If you like your Delta blues tempered by British steel and ragga-Zepp-droning drama, try “Terminal Archenemy Endling.” If you want to buy a floppy hat and dusty coat like an old blues guy, enjoy the hellhound, hillbilly contours of “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking).”
For all of No Name’s plain-wrapper blues, however—and it is straightforward and funky—there’s something weird and testy about the whole project, as if he’s experimenting with being the Jack White you really liked when he was Meg White’s brother or husband or whatever back in the White Stripes days without the 2022-era White’s blue helmet hair. And though you surely love hearing an artist evolving as quickly as possible away from their past victories (well, sometimes), No Name seems to revel in taking its blue beat from White’s back pages while rushing ahead to the dénouement in the tight-as-twins name of devolution and evolution.
