SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: JACK WHITE – FROZEN CHARLOTTE

JACK WHITE
FROZEN CHARLOTTE
THIRD MAN RECORDS

Jack White has just released his latest solo release, Frozen Charlotte. It is a 13-track, guitar-and-drums gauntlet, that proves no one has been able to cut out White’s adrenal glands or coax him into writing power ballads on a synthesizer.

It’s also relentless. The initial tracks such as “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs,” “Derecho Demonico,” and “There’s Nobody There,” are catchy, with plenty of guitar breaks, saturated organ interludes, and lots of echo to give the music an almost doom-like quality. As he did as far back as the first White Stripes album, White still makes use of his trademark bottleneck guitar in “Dollar Bill” and ends the album with the relieving yet seductive “Neighbors Blues.” In fact, White might be one of the few artists around today, save Samantha Fish, Gary Clark Jr., or Larkin Poe, that keep blues-based rock fresh yet intense.

But with all the hard guitars, overdriven vocals, and drumming, Frozen Charlotte does suffer from too much eardrum punching. By the time one gets to “Nobody Knows” or “She’s in a Frenzy,” the hard sound wears thin. Listening to the lyrics, such as title battle cry “We’re as thick as thieves!” in “Thick as Thieves” or “We were born under a blue sky/But we’ve been alone since the day we came in.”

Though somewhat hard to digest audibly track-upon-track, listeners can rest assured that Frozen Charlotte has Jack White making his six-string be heard and belting out those distorted vocals.

Artist Links