Jack White review – the din lets you in

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/06/jack-white-live-review-hammersmith-apollo

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A retro-futurist TV sits centre-stage, atop a stack of amps. The pattern of wobbly lines on its screen – what used to signify the lack of a signal, back when TV went to bed for the night – bursts into crazed life as Jack White and his five-strong band blast out an instrumental opener that sounds as triumphant as a finale.

These analogue waveforms dance wildly all through the night, as songs from the White Stripes, the Dead Weather, the Ranconteurs and White solo bear down in an almost continuous megamix. The moshpit jumps as though the floor were shorting, as a heavy version of Sixteen Saltines (from White's debut solo album, Blunderbuss) gives way to an old White Stripes song, Astro, then a take on the Stripes' Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, ripe with additional sound. Above, three lighting rigs gradually tilt down, forming the Roman numeral III – a nod to White's label, Third Man Records, to his adopted name, Jack White III and the fact that he probably does the cultural work of three men. Recently, White has coaxed Neil Young into a glorified phone booth to make an album of covers, recorded the fastest single ever made and still found the time to ban his kids from having electronic toys and get divorced from his second wife Karen Elson – amicably, at first, then a little more rancorously. Lazaretto, White's latest album, is being read as (another) break-up album. A more subtle take might be that White has always been sceptical of love's trade-offs and that here, he is riffing hard – and often playfully – on another favourite state of mind, his sense of embattled isolation.

White's gig at Hammersmith's Apollo isn't quite as high-concept as the one he played the previous night – an art-stunt in which no fewer than 100 willing lab rats subjected themselves to a secret gig disguised as a medical emergency in exchange for some tunes – but it repays close attention to detail. Come to Jack White cold, and his set is nearly two hours of increasingly deranged blues-rock, in which words, nuance and entire tunes can be lost in a maelstrom of guitar, keys and keening fiddles, played by Lillie Mae Rische and Fats Kaplin.

If you focus, however, the din lets you in. You can make out the theremin solos, the pedal steel and the internal conversations on Three Women, itself a rewrite of the Blind Willie McTell's song. White will come out with a mischievous line about some of his proclaimed sexual conquests, and Ikey Owens will answer with a cheeky run of keys and Rische with a vamp on the electric mandolin.

Obviously, well-loved White Stripes tunes like Hotel Yorba stand out for everyone, providing periodic jolts of communion. But a lot of the pleasures of this incarnation of Jack White lie in the interstices – the fluent instrumentals, like the terrific High Ball Stepper, or the seemingly tossed-off segues. The tracks here turn out to be just points of anchorage for the free play of White's impressive band, who are honed and loose. White's music may be rooted in the blues, but it has always been carnivorous, cannibalising entire genres (he's got a big appetite for country, currently, thanks to his Nashville tenure) and interpolating bits of other people's work. Tonight, one of White's signature blues-imp workouts, Ball and Biscuit, begins as The Dead Kennedys' Holiday in Cambodia. Hank Williams' Ramblin' Man is sped up and spat out at punk intensity, trading off with the Stripes' Cannon.

This impressive display of virtuosity comes at the expense of definition and vulnerability. On headphones, Lazaretto, his latest album can be intensely rewarding, the detail placed just so. Live, White prefers shock-and-awe and double helpings of everything, where once his minimalism was his calling card.

There is no sign of the little-boy-lost who wrote the song We're Going to Be Friends. You could argue that White has never really been that little-boy-lost, or that that particular aspect of White's charm has tipped over into bewildered petulance on his last two records. Songs such as Lazaretto's intriguing Alone in My Home and Would You Fight for My Love (both great tonight) will only admit to some vulnerability while huffing and grandstanding.

There is no question though, that the complicated man who is tossing his mop of electrocuted black hair remains one of the most mesmerising things you could stick on a stage and plug in. A delirious finale of Seven Nation Army, – White's belligerent gauntlet thrown to all comers before it was a football chant – just seals the deal.

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