I'll start by saying that I feel like I've been listening to the album non-stop for these seven or so weeks. Especially while I'm driving. Sometimes the whole thing. Sometimes select songs. Sometimes select songs on repeat.
My current favorites are: "Freedom At 21", "Trash Tongue Talker", "Take Me With You When You Go", "I Guess I Should Go To Sleep", "Missing Pieces", and the title track, "Blunderbuss" (which is my favorite favorite). I'm loving the album as a whole, but these are the songs that I find myself craving.
I wrote a post about the word blunderbuss earlier this Spring, before the album was released, and I think that the title is spot on. There's something explosive about many of the songs, but they also have a sort of romance and a bittersweet, brutal allure. There are three songs in particular that are (lyrically) quite violent. One of these is the first single from the album, "Love Interruption".
And then there are songs like "Weep Themselves To Sleep" and "Blunderbuss" which melt my heart every time I hear them.
One of my favorite lyrical bits is from the album opener "Missing Pieces": "Sometimes someone controls everything about you, and when they tell you that they just can't live without you, they ain't lying. They'll take pieces of you, and they'll stand above you, and walk away. That's right, and take a part of you with them".
Musically, Blunderbuss is fascinating. Rich and spatially dense, while still offering some breathing room in between sounds. I love all of the piano, and Jack's guitar is fantastic, especially on the album closer "Take Me With You When You Go". What a surprising gem of a song. As it begins, you think that you know how it's going to be, and then before too long it's changed into something altogether different, new, and exhilarating.
Jack White's solo debut Blunderbuss is available now in record stores, and online (or in person, if you're in Nashville!) at Third Man Records.
