For more than a decade, you could be forgiven for thinking that Jack White – rock and roll’s last great aesthetic purist – had diverged from his righteous path, if not lost his way entirely. Once an unbridled force of nature, his music had become so self-conscious and studied that, if nothing else, you had to give it to him for trying so damn hard.
You could sense trouble as early as the last two White Stripes records, as the band began to buckle under the burden of their self-imposed limitations. Other aesthetic purists before them (the Ramones, AC/DC, Motörhead) have all faced this problem too, as the conceptual perfection of the original vision was diluted, fell into decay or simply grew dull.
But to watch White in concert right now – after the release of his celebrated sixth solo album, No Name – is to see him reclaim his place in the pantheon. His four-piece band reduced Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane to smoking ruins on Thursday night, the best demolition job on a music venue in this city since the Deen Brothers levelled the Cloudland Ballroom in 1982.
I’m speaking metaphorically, of course (not to mention hyperbolically). But John Peel wasn’t kidding when he described the White Stripes as the most exciting thing he’d heard since the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and with this new group, White has found the vehicle to radically expand his old band’s sound. It’s matched by his best set of new material since the band’s demise.
There is no room, and no need, for nostalgia. After orchestrating what sounds like an earthquake for an intro, White leads the band into Old Scratch Blues, the first cut from No Name. It’s followed by That’s How I’m Feeling – three minutes of raucous, loud-quiet-loud pop that the present iteration of the Pixies would frankly kill for.
A whoop of appreciation greets Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, the first dip into the White Stripes catalogue, but then it’s back to No Name with the scything It’s Rough On Rats (If You’re Asking). This song posits that even if rodents manage to outlive us, we’ve left them a worse planet to inhabit. Hey, White says, he’s just asking.
Rather than waiting for the hits, the packed 3,000-capacity crowd falls on these new songs like a pack of starving dogs. White doesn’t need to teach us the call-and-response sections – the oh-oh-ohs that give the pulverising What’s the Rumpus? its sly appeal; the “UHHH!!! OH YEAH!!!” that caps the choruses of That’s How I’m Feeling.
We roll and tumble through Hotel Yorba, which retains all its naive charm. Special commendation must go to drummer Patrick Keeler, who honours Meg White’s original parts, never overcrowding the songs. Elsewhere, such as on the Raconteurs’ Broken Boy Soldier, he lays down a groove heavy enough for a brontosaurus to get down and boogie to.
And White is possessed. He lurches through blues standards (Robert Johnson’s Stop Breaking Down, Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign, the traditional John the Revelator) like they were written yesterday, then summons his best demented preacher act for Archbishop Harold Holmes, “coming to your town to break it all down”.
He shimmies, pouts, stomps, and he solos wildly and at length. Rock’s era of cultural dominance may have passed long ago, but as White cajoles and conjures both band and audience he seems to be reminding himself – as well as the rest of us – of its physical dimensions and shapeshifting power.
Some may have been annoyed by his pleas to put our phones away, but it’s a request that’s mostly respected, even as the band charges headlong through a final roll-call of White Stripes classics (Black Math, Blue Orchid and, inevitably, Seven Nation Army). As the old Deen Brothers slogan had it, after the demolition, all that’s left behind are memories.
Jack White is touring Australia until 14 December – Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney – then New Zealand 16-17 December
