Jack White knows which side his bread is buttered on. After experimenting with electronica, sampling, and fuller instrumentation in his pair of 2022 albums (Fear of the Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive), 2024’s No Name returned to a simpler, guitar-centered format. In his new drop, Frozen Charlotte, the apple doesn’t fall far from that tree, focusing on blues-based guitar rock. I’m not trying to say that he’s reheating his own nachos (that would be far too many dorky food-based cliches in one opening paragraph). But this album works best when it centers on White’s trademark guitar style of short, clipped phrases that feel disjointed, but somehow say something brilliant together even though the small parts feel incomplete.
The lead track, “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs”, is a great example. After a brief, chopping intro, White sings “Welcome to the Garden of Eden .... And it’ll sound like this:” and rips off a string of contorted notes that can’t be called a melody but twist perfectly around the empty space left by the silent band, then stick the landing. The topic of the first (or last) man and woman on earth have been hacked to death by music, movies, and The New Yorker cartoons, but White revisits it here and can’t resist putting his own weird spin on it: “Welcome to the end of the world/nobody left but 1 boy 1 girl (and 1 other) \[what?] but you know we can’t live like/a sister and a brother/we’re gonna make you a mother now!” Cue a second brilliant, spastic guitar riff while my mind is backtracking to the 2000s and White’s bizarre insistence that his White Stripes band mate, Meg White, was his sister, when they were in fact married. Does he have some sort of confusion between siblings and romantic relationships? Is he poking fun at his critics for making such a big deal about the situation? Let us know your hot takes.
