On his new album, Jack White’s guitar sounds like a circular saw, a flamethrower and a stuttering laser

Jack White, the rock god of the twenty-first century, let Canadian music magazine Exclaim! knowing that he would get bored if he put heavy guitar riffs in all his songs. Why would he? Even though he is the man who makes the world with Seven Nation Army gave one of the most famous guitar runs of all time.

After listening to Fear of the Dawn that can mean two things. A: White was terribly bored recording his fifth solo album. B: White has retracted that statement. because Fear of the Dawn houses a wealth of guitar violence that rams itself into your head to be impossible to get out. Maybe White was allowed again because his ‘soft’ folk album will be released later this year.

Now be on opener Taking Me Back subjected the snare drum heads to a sustained stress test, and White’s guitar sounds successively like a circular saw, a flamethrower, and a stuttering laser. There is the manic overdrive of an industrial metal band like Ministry, where you are overloaded with the hybrid hum of guitar and synthesizer.

But White refuses to limit himself to straightforward rock and adorns every song with unexpected melodies or idioms from other pop genres: prog rock synths, dub reggae and even close harmony. Even if he thinks about it Hi De Ho with a rap from Q-Tip.

The structure may be extremely coarse-grained, the fundamental tone is rock, White has built a wonderfully versatile, brutal machine with that base material.