Jack White: Charlotte Freeze Review – a mean, nasty blue-collar who just sells his stupidity | Jack White

MeIt’s a strange thing to say about one of the greatest artists of his generation – or any generation, but: Jack White has been experiencing something of a renaissance lately. Having established himself as one of the most beloved and well-known figures of 21st-century rock with his original blues duo the White Stripes, White seemed to grow in the next decade-plus, releasing the albums of his favorite Raconteurs and Dead Weather, dropping several albums, vinyl records and good music. His label is the pressing plant Third Man Records.

But, sometime in the mid-2010s – around the release of his third album, Boarding House Reach of 2018, say – White’s influence and popularity seemed to exceed his output, when rising pop stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo called him a great influence. Record plants around the world were supported, thanks to the famous artists who released several versions of their own vinyl records, which caused the delay of indie artists for several months – not a problem that White caused (and maybe he was angry with him), but certainly because of the craze that he helped. At the same time, all the problems with the codes of White’s output – the specific colors and sometimes advanced ideas – threatened to disrupt the immediacy and sharpness that was the basis of White’s original music.

White spent money The last few years have proved that fame is not really important if the music hits. In 2024, he released his sixth album No Name and a little spice – unlabeled copies were bought and bought in his Third Man stores, which is a brand, very cool – great response. Featuring the kind of blues-rock he’s made his name for, Way Back to No Name’s material was a welcome reminder that, beneath the magic, White was still worthy of his stature.

Frozen Charlotte, White’s follow-up to No Name, finds the 51-year-old digging his heels in even further, embracing the brutal, brash and brash side of ’70s blues rock that has always informed his work. Opener GOD and Broken Ribs, bolshie, a silly retelling of the story of Genesis, puts the words, and White jumps on a muscular blues chug, between histrionic guitar solos: “Look at me shaking, then I’m rolling baby / And take me out, take me out, take me out, scream / From my soul, it’s salt and coal.

The 40-odd minutes that follow are loud and clear and seem to focus more on the production and instrumentation than the political No Name. The slow pace makes Raising the Seed a restless, unsteady place, with White singing about how to “cook with linseed oil” before entering “the grave where the river flows”. You’ll Never Fix Me is an old-fashioned White garage barnstormer, its bleak lyrics seem less important than the rebellious sentiments that come across in White and his nasty, messy band.

As on No Name, it’s great to hear White return to this no-frills style with the fury and brutality in his vocals that really sell a line like “click clack, back track, tick tock, smack talk”. This is kind of a visual masterpiece, but it’s better than the White solo record that preceded No Name, and you’ll probably feel better than anything, say, 2022’s clowny Fear of the Dawn.

Even so: while Frozen Charlotte is fun, and doesn’t feel underwhelming, it could be so much more. Unlike No Name, there’s little difference between the songs, and when you get to She’s in Frenzy, you start to wonder if the album just went back to the beginning, and you’re listening to the same guitar playing and mocking rap songs from before. Frozen Charlotte works well in moving away from this area, as in Neighbors Blues, a true pan-singer that plays as a Neighbor song, the HBO show from earlier this year about the mysterious conflicts between people who share a fence. This attack makes this song more effective in causing problems than many other songs in the reserve, which tend to play the hands quickly, disrupting White’s power. It’s the surprise of the album as a whole: this record could be part of White’s recovery, but maybe helped by a way back.

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