Jack White "Fear of the Dawn"
For all of Jack White’s mystery and mythology—a good deal of it generated by the man himself—he has long been nakedly devoted to rock ‘n’ roll music. His fourth solo album, Fear of the Dawn, is another expression of that devotion.
It’s also a continuation of White’s peculiarly expansive primitivism, within which he sticks to simple song forms and simultaneously complicates them via production techniques, instrumental experimentation and general fiddling-about.
The simplicity and complexity have precedents in the later White Stripes albums and White’s work within the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs, but with White definitively in solo mode and in charge—overseeing production and playing myriad instruments, including guitar, drums, and theremin—he’s freer to fiddle.
One of the most interesting diversions is “Hi-De-Ho,” with a broad honorable nod to and a direct sample of Cab Calloway, plus a playfully serious contribution from A Tribe Called Quest rapper Q-Tip that nudges White toward voodoo-shaman delirium a la Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.
“Into the Twilight” uses a different sample, from vocal quartet Manhattan Transfer’s 1979 song “Twilight Zone,” to connect stark piano, horror-movie organ, and crisp, shiny modern-rock beats into a kind of collage for a rock disco of the dreaming mind.
White can also still be as straight-ahead as the punk wildcat he was, or acted as if he was, 20 years ago in Detroit: “Taking Me Back” blows open the beginning of the album with riffs coming down like Norse god hammers, and “Morning, Noon, and Night” takes spooky, loving blues to a deserted carnival.
And Fear of the Dawn is the first of two Jack White albums this year; the other, Entering Heaven Alive, is due in July. If it’s as intense and musical as this one, the strength of his devotion, his faith, will be nearly unquestionable.
