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Album reviews Music

Jack White’s new album Boarding House Reach is… weird

Rating: NNN


Jack White has always been concerned with time. His career is, in essence, a tribute to the past, which he always does out of love, but it’s sometimes at the risk of alienating the present or future. That makes his latest record a bit of a head-scratcher. 

Boarding House Reach is… weird. White’s third solo album is ambitious, fuzzy, and futuristic but it’s not inherently bad, just weird. It’s certainly not an album for the past and it’s not one that fits exactly in the present. So where does it land? 

The record contains a multitude of sounds. White’s yelps and screams, reverb, synth and jittery guitar riffs could be more pleasant or cohesive, but that’s not White’s style, especially not on this record. Piling it all on seems to be the point he’s trying to make – this sense of being overwhelmed, constantly, at the hands of technology. 

Connected By Love, the album’s opening track, begins with synths that sound like you’re about to walk into a cloudy rave. Why Walk A Dog? is a heartbreaking look inside the commodification of animals and their worth. Corporation is an almost six minute long cataclysmic sound event with pointed lyrics about the militarism of business that feels supremely exhausting. They are all good enough, but at the same time I struggle to find their purpose.

When White does the past, he does it well. Humoresque, the song written by notorious gangster Al Capone, which White found and adapted for his record, has basic, subtle instrumentation: percussion, piano and guitar. It’s actually quite beautiful, and he sounds more comfortable than on any other track.

On Ice Station Zebra, an excellently funky tune, White sings, “Everything in the world gets labelled and named/ A box, a rough definition, unavoidable.” And while White is certainly trying to redefine himself on his own terms with this album, we might just not know how to handle it yet. 

Top track: Humoresque

Jack White plays Budweiser Stage on June 9. See listing.

music@nowtoronto.com | @sarahsmacdonald

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