Last Friday, customers at Third Man Records stores in Detroit, Nashville, and London received a free 12-inch vinyl record with their purchases. The LP was packaged in an all-white sleeve with only the words “No Name” printed on the cover. No artist was credited, and no songs were listed. Only the A and B sides were given titles — “Heaven And Hell” and “Black And Blue,” respectively. Within hours, it was revealed that the vinyl was actually Jack White’s sixth solo album, after which Third Man encouraged fans to rip the songs and share them online.
If this is the first you’re hearing of this news, it’s through no fault of your own. After all, there’s all this (waves hands) happening in the country. But there is also the much smaller matter of Jack White’s solo career. The man has been mired in an extended musical midlife crisis for the better part of a decade now. Boarding House Reach, Fear Of The Dawn, Entering Heaven Alive — these are hardly records that have set the world on fire. And I say that as one of the lonely critics who actually stood up for those albums, though admittedly my praise was qualified. Famously a hardcore Bob Dylan devotee, White has experienced his own “’80s Dylan period” in the late aughts and early ’20s, in which the iconic ex-White Stripe has responded to middle age by halfheartedly embracing modern technology and steering his music away from the primal garage-rock simplicity that has long defined him. While I appreciate White’s recent work more than most, I must confess that I find it more fascinating than, well, enjoyable. Even White himself has at times appeared disinterested in new Jack White music — during the album cycle for Fear Of The Dawn, he said he stopped making music for a time and instead focused on one of his other pastimes, building furniture.
When word spread of the new “surprise” Jack White record last week, I can’t say I was especially intrigued. A vinyl-only release literally given away to customers? My assumption was that it would be even more convoluted and scattershot than Boarding House Reach or Fear Of The Dawn, only this time with somehow less cultural relevancy. Instantly forgettable, in other words. But then a friend slipped me a Google Drive link over the weekend, with the promising if seemingly credulous disclaimer that it was “his best solo album.” Huh, I thought. Am I going to fall for this? I downloaded the files, imported them to my Apple Music account, and pressed play. And I have kept pushing play ever since.
“No Name,” as we’ll call it, isn’t exactly Jack White’s best solo record. (I still ride for Blunderbuss, his solo debut from 2012, a quasi-Blood On The Tracks about the end of The White Stripes and White’s conflicted emotions about his prodigal partner Meg White.) But it’s the record that people who still check out new Jack White albums in 2024 have been waiting for. And it might even by the album that brings estranged listeners back into the fold. Simply put: It’s Jack White in a room with his crackerjack band, playing extremely loud, on a collection of riff-y rock songs that sound like they were written five minutes before they were recorded. It’s raw, it’s direct, and — this is a compliment — it’s not all that thought out. But the adjective that most applies hasn’t appeared in a Jack White album review since possibly the mid-aughts: Great. “No Name” is actually pretty damn great.
Take “Track 8” — none of the songs have titles, though some listeners have made guesses for the YouTube streams — which opens with a quick count-off before a galloping drum wallop enters along with a staccato guitar riff that can only be described as “unabashedly Zeppelinesque.” After about 100 seconds of that, White rips out a solo that can only be described as “unabashedly Jack White-esque,” a strangled squeak that sounds like a dolphin choking on a fuzz pedal. (Again, complimentary.)
The rest of “No Name” finds White operating on a similar sort of muscle memory. Sometimes, he borrows from himself – the relentless stop-start riffage of “Track 3” evokes “The Hardest Button To Button,” and the testy punk rock of “Track 11” bears more than a passing resemblance to “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine.” But overall, “No Name” indulges in the sorts of classic rock moves that White normally reserves for side projects like The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, though with 65 percent less slickness. When he’s not leaning hard into the Jimmy Page-worshiping side of his musical personality, like the “straight from side one of Led Zeppelin II” closer “Track 13,” he’s tipping a cap to other Page worshipers. (Like “Track 5,” which cribs from the riff for Heart’s “Barracuda.”)
Have you noticed how often I have used the word “riff”? I so rarely get to use that word in reviews anymore. If nothing else, “No Name” confirms that White remains a modern master of catchy and kinetic guitar parts, if and when he decides that he wants to be. And that’s actually valuable real estate to occupy in a musical landscape where so few bands are interested in writing memorable guitar licks. Once the backbone of rock music, simple but indestructible riffs have given way to plucked acoustic guitars, gloomy synths, cinematic strings, and countless other atmospherics. And yet public appetite for new riffs remains. It’s not as if our international fan populations for athletic competitions can subsist only on “Seven Nation Army” forever.
If “No Name” had been given a proper release, I suspect unsympathetic critics would have described it as “low stakes.” But for Jack White, it feels like the opposite of that. This is an artist who needs to remind the world of his greatness. Recent attempts at resetting the modern musical canon have given him short shrift. The recent Apple 100 list — an imperfect metric, I know, but also a much-discussed and visible barometer — didn’t include a single White Stripes record. (The tiny cohort of 21st century rock bands instead included The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys.) The more comprehensive Rolling Stone Top 500 albums list from 2022 managed to squeeze the consensus choice for best White Stripes record, 2003’s Elephant, in at No. 449. But that’s still pretty underwhelming for a band — not that long ago! — rightly considered one of the best in the world.
In that context, “No Name” feels like an uncommon act of humility from White. I doubt that this artist, who has never been short of bravado or hubris, is unaware of how good this album is. But like a lot of artists his age, he might feel unsure that the audience is there to appreciate what he’s produced. So, allow me to make a case for “No Name” in the same raw and direct terms that this record operates musically: You know those other recent Jack White solo records? Those are the ones that should have been given away for free. “No Name” meanwhile is worth all the money in the bank.
