Video: Jack White - Freedom At 21
If you’re gonna do bad things, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Clearly Jack White has done something wrong in his new video for “Freedom At 21”, otherwise he wouldn’t be trying to evade the law in his gorgeous green car, or escape from jail with his pumped up guitar kicks, or get Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme outta bed on a Monday morning to take up his role of volunteer-badass-cop-who-stands-at-road-blocks-looking—like-a-smug-badass.
“Freedom At 21” is taken from Jack White’s debut solo album Blunderbuss, which is out now.
Listen: Jack White - Inaccessible Mystery
The buzz surrounding former White Stripes frontman Jack White and his debut solo album Blunderbuss was fairly big, to say the least.
Also grabbing attention is the different methods and ingenious ways he comes up with how to distribute and create vinyl, perhaps none more so than his one for “Freedom At 21”, in which he released 1,000 7” vinyls attached to helium balloons and let them sail through the Tennessee skies, free to anyone who could find them.
They then re-released the single so regular punters could get a hold of it, and the b-side to said single, “Inaccessible Mystery”, is now up online, though the only caveat is that the quality of the vinyl rip isn’t amazing, but still good enough to enjoy.
Video: Alabama Shakes And Jack White On Jools Holland, Part 2
The other night when Jools Holland aired with Alabama Shakes, Jack White, and Grimes, they played a few cuts from their respective albums and now the rest of their sets have made their way online.
Jack White did “Blunderbuss” track “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy”, The White Stripes classic (and my personal favourite song of theirs) “Ball And Biscuit”, and a little interview with Jools in which they did an impromptu version of “St. James Infirmary Blues” on piano.
Also recorded was Alabama Shakes letting rip on their “Boys & Girls” track “Hang Loose”, all of which can be seen below.
Video: Jack White Visits The Colbert Show
Check out Jack White on The Colbert Show last night as he performed “Freedom At 21” from his new album “Blunderbuss” and chats to Stephen about…..well, a bunch of stuff that’s not “Blunderbuss”. Peep it below, thanks to The Audio Perv.
Watch Alabama Shakes, Jack White, And Grimes Play Jools Holland
Jools Holland’s show kicked off tonight with a bumper line-up of artists who’ve released some of the best albums of the year so far.
Jack White played a couple of tracks from his excellent debut solo album “Blunderbuss”, Alabama Shakes played from their equally-as fantastic debut LP “Boys & Girls”, and Canadian experimental indie-electronic artist Grimes played from her stunning album “Visions”.
Watch each of the performances below and let us know what you think in the comments.
Review/Listen: Jack White - “Blunderbuss”
When the news broke that The White Stripes had officially broken up back in February of 2011, my feelings were somewhat mixed: of course, The White Stripes were and still are one of my favourite bands, one of the few bands active in my lifetime whose discography seems to warrant obsessing over and scouring through in the same fashion as those of many more established legends, and, of course, you always look forward to a new album from your favourite band. The discovery that no such new album would ever come was naturally something of a disappointment.
But there was an excitement too: it had already been five years since the last White Stripes record, and you won’t find many people who would be willing to put “Icky Thump” and “Get Behind Me Satan” on the same critical pedestal that “Elephant”, “White Blood Cells” and “De Stijl” have risen to over time. The White Stripes may have broken up in 2011, but even to diehards it was obvious that the project was losing steam some time before that. With the break up announced, it was finally possible to anticipate a Jack White solo album, an album free from the much-commented upon, self-imposed restrictions of The White Stripes, or any of the obligations of working with a collaborator. Press releases in the build up to “Blunderbuss” stressed that these songs could not have been recorded as anything other than a Jack White album, and so anticipation heightened: “Blunderbuss” would be “Jack White: Unbounded”, or perhaps, given the turmoil of band breakup and White’s separation from his wife Karen Elson in the same year, “Jack White: Unhinged”.
Certainly there are signs on “Blunderbuss” that White’s songwriting has been informed by the tumultuous events of 2011. On the crunching single “Sixteen Saltines” White wails “Who’s jealous of who? If I get busy then I couldn’t care less what you do”. Similarly, on opening track “Missing Pieces”, he describes the departure of a partner as a process of painful disembodiment, albeit disguised by an upbeat tune and White’s faintly comic delivery of key lines – “I woke up and my hands were gone, yeah, I looked down and my legs were long gone.” All disguise, whether musical or tonal, is dropped for the track’s final, biting line: “Sometimes someone controls everything about you” and when that person leaves, they “take a part of you with them.” It’s hard not to imagine that White is describing Elson here, though it could just as easily be Meg White. After all, Jack did claim in a recent interview that “Meg completely controlled The White Stripes”.
Just whose presence it is that seems to pervade White’s lyrics here is ultimately not something to get hung up on: White showed plenty of bile as a member of The White Stripes and, given his obvious continuing readiness to put music ahead of personal history [Elson provides backing vocals on this album], it hardly seems fair to assume that hints of hostility here pertain to the real world any more than they did in his past work. White’s greatest talent, besides his breathtaking skill as a guitarist, has always been in fanciful first-person storytelling with an emotional punch.
Besides, beyond the prickliness of some of the opening tracks, “Blunderbuss” moves away from any remotely confessional territory and evolves into a genre-hopping joyride. The transformation begins with lead single “Love Interruption”, a fairly simple folk number whose macabre metaphors don’t make for the same uplifting reading on paper as they do when heard to a tune. It’s followed by the title track, an old western love story with an impeccably measured pedal steel guitar opening. White displays his punning chops as he and his lover flee from her previous man, “a romantic bust, a blunder turned explosive blunderbuss.”
Later White tackles old fashioned rhythm and blues on “I’m Shakin’” – the highlight of which has to be his tongue in cheek exaggeration of Little Willie John’s pronunciation of nervous [he’s “noy-vus”] – before some irresistibly cheery honky-tonk on “Trash Tongue Talker” and “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy”. The result of all this good cheer is that by the time the upbeat final number, “Take Me With You When You Go”, comes around, the only thing preventing it from being bundled into the same category as previous, light-hearted White Stripes album closers like “It’s True That We Love One Another”, “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)”,and “Effect & Cause” is that “Blunderbuss” exhibits the same charm and ‘wink wink, nudge nudge’ attitude as those songs do for almost half of its length, not just at its conclusion. Oh, and also the fact that “Take Me With You When We Go” explodes into the hardest rocking track on the album at exactly its halfway point. The riff ranks among White’s finest and makes for an absolutely killer conclusion.
The only complaint that can really be borne against “Blunderbuss” is that it doesn’t feature a little more of the powerful riffing that it closes with and that people have come to expect from Jack White, though his music has been trending that way for some time. The result is that “Blunderbuss” doesn’t simply come off as “Jack White: Unbounded”, an explosion of raw creative energy in a newly personal context; rather, it’s simultaneously reserved and adventurous, reeling in the hard rock while putting out feelers everywhere else, and, importantly, it’s just a total blast.
[Listen] - Jack White - “Blunderbuss” (Full Album Stream)
Listen to Jack White’s debut solo album “Blunderbuss” below.
Over the weekend we posted one of Jack White’s newest songs “Freedom At 21”, a track that he’d released into the world via helium balloon as a 7” single, that then touched down somewhere for someone to rip it and throw it up online.
He’s now got the entirety of “Blunderbuss” streaming via iTunes, but you can also listen to it below. Tracks like “Freedom At 21”, “Love Interruption”, and “Sixteen Saltines” only served to heighten the excitement surrounding the album and our patience has paid.
Listen to “Blunderbuss” in its entirety below and let us know what you think. How does it fare against our beloved White Stripes catalogue?
[Listen] - Jack White - “Freedom At 21”
Listen to Jack White’s new song “Freedom At 21” below, from his album “Blunderbuss”.
By now you’ve no doubt heard the story behind Jack White’s latest 7” single “Freedom At 21”, but in case you haven’t, then this is for you.
A few weeks ago he let off 1,000 helium balloons, each with a 7” single of a brand new song “Freedom At 21”. Statistics show that on launches like this less than 10% of the balloons are ever recovered, and so far there have been maybe 30 or so, most of which have ended up on eBay for upwards of $3,000.
Well now we have the audio, ripped straight from the vinyl itself (complete with pops and hisses and crackles), and is probably the best new track of his that we’ve heard yet after “Love Interruption” and “Sixteen Saltines”, though I am more of a fan of The White’s Stripes’ heavier, bluesy punk-rock tracks, so that might be why.
White’s debut solo album “Blunderbuss” is released on April 23rd via his own Third Man Records, and listen to “Freedom At 21” below.
[Video] - Jack White - “Sixteen Saltines”
Watch the new video for Jack White’s song “Sixteen Saltines” below, taken from the album “Blunderbuss”.
