Jack White
Fear of the Dawn
Third Man
Listen Below
As the creative mind behind The White Stripes—the world’s last truly great rock band—Jack White’s career as-is rests on the impossibly high standards of a decade’s worth of cultural touchstones. Look up “ubiquity” in the right dictionary, and you’ll find “Seven Nation Army” as an example.
In 2022, we find ourselves looking at a far-from-lackluster solo career from the genre’s best-dressed frontman—even at his least accessible, White provides enjoyable listens through the sheer excellence of his musicianship. Not a single smack of a drum nor squeal of a guitar string has ever felt without passion, and that continues here, on Fear of the Dawn, his first of two albums to be released this year.
White has divided his menacing industrial guitar tones from his folkier acoustics, with the former featuring exclusively here. Bolstered by some of his grooviest riffs, this will certainly be a less polarizing record than 2018’s Boarding House Reach and it’s unquestionably more cohesive. It’s designed to be listened to LOUD, with particularly the title track and “The White Raven” showcasing his exceptional ability to make a guitar sound like anything but a guitar. Coupled with his muscular, cymbal-heavy drums, the formula remains intact.
However, there is a slight disconnect between instrumentation and vocals. While throwing loose platitudes and all kinds of imagery at the wall to see what sticks, relatively few punches are pulled overall, and not even Q-Tip—who appears on “Hi-De-Ho”—manages to change that here. It’s no dealbreaker, but it does lend the album a jam session quality that might appeal more to long-time fans than passers-by.
Usually a fervent collaborator, White recorded this project isolated in the studio, writing every song, and playing every instrument himself. He’s more than capable, but the caveat of this approach is the lack of feminine touch that has given a kindly nuance to some of his best material, even in the face of his pedal-to-the-metal approach to guitar work, which clearly remains here. Lacking the touches that Beyoncé, Nashville heavyweights like Ashley Monroe and Loretta Lynn, or of course, Meg White were able to provide, Fear of the Dawn could be accused of being somewhat tastelessly pheromonal.
That’s hardly to say that this album sounds bad, at all—in fact, it’s wonderfully clean and well-mastered. Some may miss the mistakes-an’-all analogue production of the White Stripes discography, but White’s new approach is never stiflingly quaint nor outright blusterous.
Time will tell whether dividing the rock and folk halves of Jack White will leave this two-album project one cull short of a gratifying listening experience. Fear of the Dawn is a focused and galivanting Red Bull car chase at midnight, at once its biggest strength and the hindrance to its chances at longevity. It functions perfectly well in its totality as an album just right for the length of time between mood swings.
Jack White’s apotheosis may be in the past, but a decade on from the launch of his solo career, he’s still capable of a stirring forty minutes.
Notable Tracks: “Taking Me Back” | “That Was Then, This Is Now” | “The White Raven”
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