Review Summary: Interesting does not equal fun
As far as I know about Jack White, he was in a band with his sister who maybe was his wife, or maybe it was his wife who was his sister, and together they made the hit Seven Nation Army, which is great. And that the band broke up and he's going solo. That's about all I know about him. However, when I read a glowing review on one of our Czech servers that said, quote.
"Furious guitars in all ways, hard, distorted, deformed. Vocals riddled with filters, screams, screeches, rap. Like disturbing paintings made of black and blue splashes on a white canvas."
So I thought, well dude that sounds good and headed to Spotify. I listened to it and said Hmm that was really interesting. However, I didn't share the author's enthusiasm and my life went on. Then I came across another glowing review where they were highlighting how amazing the Hi-De-Ho track was, which I didn't find amazing but went for another listen.
Well, I found that the album, while undoubtedly interesting in the way it composes and jumps from different riffs, distorted, hard, bluesy, there are some interesting bass lines, I found that one thing really bothered me about it. And that's Jack White himself.
His distorted, raspy vocals, that's something that really doesn't sit well with me and I don't enjoy listening to it. Jack White strikes me as that high school classmate who is kind of ADHD, likes to have the spotlight, and likes to show off how funny he is. He's not. Not for me.
In the first review I mentioned, they also mentioned that Jack White is newly married,and of course the wedding took place on stage. Well, of course. I'm a funny, crazy boy.
Compositionally he's interesting, the different directions he takes with the songwriting, the different electronic elements he uses is more interesting than outright entertaining. For example, the opener Taking Me Back at first seems like a totally stripped down track with a bunch of sounds that funnily unfolds in the lead up but it's too much and it gets too long to the point where it gets tiresome.
The album itself is then 40 minutes long but I felt it was much longer.
Jack White's exuberant style just won't be my thing, which probably proves that I consider the best track to be the ending restrained Shedding my Velvet .
