Jack White
Lazaretto
Columbia Records

www.columbiarecords.com
 

Blind Willie McTell’s 1928 Victor recording “Three Women Blues” was pure Piedmont blues with undertones of racial pride in his yellow, black and brown-skinned lovers. In Jack White’s hands, the song sounds like early-’70s arena-level British blues rock revival, while his three women are redheaded, blonde and brunette. (“It took a digital photograph to pick which one I like.”) Yes, 1920s blues lyrics can be adapted to 21st century technology, but note that White recorded Lazaretto on his own analog equipment.

“Three Women” is the CD’s sole song where White shares authorship. Still, when “Just One Drink” opens, “You drink water, I drink gasoline,” we wonder if he’s recycling a bit of Howlin’ Wolf’s “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline).” White’s dedication to the blues is clear judging by Third Man Records (which he founded) collaborating with Document Records for reissues of McTell, Charlie Patton and the Mississippi Sheiks as well as, on a grander scale, working with the Revenant label to reissue Paramount Records’ 1927-32 catalog.

In terms of arrangements, bizarrely fascinating Lazaretto (White’s second solo CD) is all over the map with moments of folk baroque, Texas blues and a plethora of rock styles. Similarly, God shifts gender from song to song as White digs into his own – and everyone’s – basic fears, frustrations and neuroses. In “Entitlement” he concludes, “Not one single person on God’s golden shore is entitled to one single thing.” Do another song’s characters, Want and Able, borrow at all from Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis?

The CD’s own genesis involved White’s recently coming upon a series of short stories he wrote in his teens. He used them as the basis for these songs and then destroyed the originals.

As for the end result, the most noted character created by 19th-century logician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) had a phrase that could well describe Lazaretto. As Alice would say, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

— Bruce Sylvester