Jack White (2) – Lazaretto

It's hard not to be self-conscious about one's reaction to Jack White's music. Disliking his work feels like a combination of commiting anti-Rock-n-Roll blasphemy and revealing to the legions of hipsters trolling every major city's dive bars that you are, indeed, completely and utterly not with it. However a fact is a fact is a fact: there are no alternatives. Lazaretto is a good album by accomplished musicians, but it's not a great album. In its totality, fewer songs are catchy and memorable than not. There are almost no hooks to hang one's hat on and decide to stay a while. Listening to Lazaretto feels a bit like dreamily wandering through a large, multi-story house of innumerable rooms, each with its own vibe, hoping to find the one that just bristles with energy and ion and wit and grit. Alas, it's hard to find that place on Lazaretto, those songs/rooms that make you want to wander through the haze over to the old couch in the corner where you'll sit and watch every last reveler as if he/she is the most fascinating person on Earth, or cut the rug with a gorgeous someone who looks and smells amazing and you can see yourself spending eternity with but know in an hour will be gone forever. As with much of Jack White's work, some songs are distinctly different from one another; but there are some unifying factors through most of the tracks. Alt-country, for lack of a better word, is strongly represented, as pedal steel, mandolin, fiddle, and Southern harmonizing provide the backdrop for nearly all the songs. Impermanence, transitive-ness, and the few mysteries our modern world still cannot reveal to us seem to bind some songs together lyrically. At his best, like some of Rock's greatest lyricists (Morrison, Dylan, for example), Jack White's lyrics walk the delicate line between the profound and nonsensical, deftly performing this high-wire act while occasionally dipping a toe into the ether on either side. However, whereas earlier Jack White work (mostly as half of The White Stripes) made writing infectious songs with instantly memorable riffs seem easy, just like some of the greatest Rock bands (The Beatles, CCR, The Who, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin), here White struggles to capture the lightning in a bottle which came so easily to him earlier in his career. The work, talent, and luck/magic it takes to create such gems of songs are certainly not easy to come by or maintain once found. But for Jack White, who has grasped the brass ring and created no less than anthems, the bar is set high, and Lazaretto doesn't reach it.