Consolers of the Lonely

My admiration for Jack White continues with every disc I acquire. The second album by one of his projects, Consolers of the Lonely, was released in 2008, and I have just now purchased it and given it several listens. It's marvelous.

All but one of the songs were written by White and band-mate Brendan Benson. White, who also has his work with White Stripes, Dead Weather, and now a solo career, is an amazingly prolific songwriter, and on this album shows his range of talent as a vocalist. There are straight ahead kick-ass rock tunes like "Salute Your Solution," "Hold Up," and "Five on the Five," which he uses his customary yowl.

But other song show different styles. I love the tune "Many Shades of Black," not only for the songwriting but for White's vocal, which at times sounds like that of a teen heart-throb of the fifties. On "These Stones Will Shout" White lets his vocal chords soar like some kind of arena rocker, for example Bono.

"Old Enough" is another fine song, which has a sensual overtone, as if a man was telling a girl to wait to be older, when she would then be old enough for him. And "The Switch and the Spur" is a mini-Western: "In the heat of the desert sun/on the blistering trail/An appaloosa and/a wanted man sprung from jail." The horn section on this song is magnificent.

The magnum opus of the album is the closing number, a Dylanesque story song of murder called "Carolina Drama." White begins, "I'm not sure if there's a point to this story/But I'm going to tell it again/So many other people try to tell the tale/Not one of them knows the end." The song is full of great little details, such as the choice of a murder weapon: "Billy got up enough courage, took it up/And grabbed the first blunt thing he could find/It was a cold, glass bottle of milk/That got delivered every morning at nine."

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Jack White is the preeminent rock performer and writer of the twenty-first century.