Jack White!

I really love Jack White. I think he's a fantastic guitarist (and drummer and pianist god damn) and a great band leader and an innovative yet simple musician. The White Stripes are required reading. It's simple and driving and awesome. The Raconteurs are equally awesome but the cool part is it's in a noticeably different way. His newest group, The Dead Weather, are just as awesome only they're fronted by a great woman singer (I want to spend a grimy week in Wyoming with her, oh my god)and it changes the tone entirely.

Each one of White's bands sounds better when you make them relative to the others.
I'm loathe to offer a single song from each group because Jack White's albums are laid out to be listened to in their entirety.

The White Stripes are him getting started out, him and Meg, young and fun and brilliant and driving and infectious and everyone went "man who the hell is Jack White FACE MELTING SOLOOOOOOO"


These are the infant years.

The Raconteurs are, then, the teenage years.

I say this because if I had had access to Consolers of the Lonely when I was, say, sixteen, I would have been much more prone to rebellion, denim jackets, and trying to play Smoke on the Water on my dads guitar.

He started to work with other commendable musicians. Formed a band, not just a traveling exhibition of his amazing skill. Sometimes he plays drums. Sometimes he plays piano. Sometimes Brendan sings the whole song. You can hear the blues, god damn it.

The Dead Weather, then, is college and I say that because I'm in college now and I'm listening to The Dead Weather.

The Dead Weather sounds tired. Sounds angry

That's a Bob Dylan cover.
If The Raconteurs are the young and eager teens walking to a fight, The Dead Weather is the side that lost, walking home. And the side that won.
It's grimy, it's covered in dust and its lip is bleeding a little and it is still unbearably sexy and right now what it really wants is a cigarette and an icepack in that order please.
Man I want to be Jack White almost as much as I want to be Johnny Depp.

Thank god I didn't have this album in high school.