Jack White - Blunderbuss (2012)

I’ve already talked about the void White Stripes’s breakup left in my life – you’ll have to do some google translating there- so I won’t stress this subject anymore.  Not being too interested in Jack White’s side projects, I was anxiously waiting for him to take the next obvious step in his career:  releasing his debut solo record. And it came… but I didin’t. Hype is a bitch and, apparently, I can’t get past my stupid habit of getting overwhelmed by it.

So here’s Blunderbluss, Jack White’s marvelous 2012 debut that pissed me off so bad that I considered having myself castrated out of frustration. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike it, but I don’t fancy it very much either – it has a shitload of  annoying gaps that I can’t believe such a brilliant artist like Jack White could’ve overlooked.  

Bluderbuss opens with Missing Pieces, a nice piece of energetic bluesy groove that makes for an interesting  start. Though a  pretty darn tight track, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad is going to happen.  The following track offered me the blessing of a temporary relief : Sixteen Saltines reminisces Blue Orchid, one of White Stripe’s best work and probably the most played song on my mobile phone.  Freedom at 21 is some sort of hybrid between rock, hip hop and dubstep (I’m dead serious here, listen to the drums) that I forgot about the second it ended. 

Sadly, after Love Interruption shit goes reeeally downhill.  It’s like Jack White decided to give all he had in the first part of the album and go lazy on the rest because, hey, people love him so much that they’ll forget his lazy fucking ass. Remember that energy I was babbling about earlier? Gone. How about that Blue Ochidish track, will the next songs follow in its footsteps and turn me into a trembling mass of dancing protoplasm? Nope. What we get is a steamy pile of boring shit, one poorly written ballad followed by the other, treating with original subjects such as love, relationships, loneliness and so on. Hypocritical Kiss sounds like the song I wrote for my kindergarten sweetheart,   Blunderbuss is a bland piano-ballad that bored me so hard I actually went to study for my final exams, and Weep Themselves to Sleep is… uhm, it’s surprisingly decent. Jack’s voice sounds good, his lyrical skills have improved…  Hey, maybe it’s not so bad after all. Granted, it’s his first solo alb----- O SHIT, PLEASE, NOT I’M SHAKIN’, OH GOD THE TERROR.

OOOH I'M SHAKIIIIN'

 Which takes me to my final annoyances : it lacks focus and it’s confusing as fuck. It’s not a ballad album, nor a basic alternative-blues one. The distorted guitars and the occasional frenetic drumming exclude the possible affiliation to the pop genre, obviously, and I can’t label it as hip hop either because, duh, Jack’s scheduled meeting with RZA got on some eldritch abomination’s nerves and never happened. It’s a fucking mess and I don’t know what to make of it. Is it good, is it bad? Do I need to hire a team of experts to decide on its quality? Make this the question of the week.  I have a ferocious headache to attend to.

Overall, Blunderbuss feels like an overloaded suitcase; no matter how hard you try to stuff  your things in there, both useful and useless, at some point your dildo is gonna show up at the luggage control and make you the laughing stock of the janitors.