psychedelicartwank-blog

[psychedelicartwank-blog]

Boarding House Reach: A Modern Record and a chance for something - anything - to happen moving forward.

I has having an argument a few months ago where my opponents where spouting that Jack White has done the same thing over his entire career, that all his music essentially sounds the same, or at least from their perspective felt the same.

I thought their argument was a bit ridiculous, but I could resonate with their central point, and maybe the one they didn’t know how to articulate, that when you put on a Jack White album, you have a sense of what it will sound like.

You know the sorts of sounds you’ll be hearing. Even though there may be new sounds that are a surprise. Most of the structure and feel is a bluesy or garage feel. Although with Lazaretto I thought that Jack White started to break away a little more creatively into some different eras, and it came across like “I’m a big rockstar and I can do whatever I want, here’s what I’ve made.”

White’s new album Boarding House Reach is truly something brand new from the artist and one no one saw coming. It’s something we haven’t seen from a major rock artist in a long time, a stark departure from the old to try and invigorate a new sound, and that poses a significant challenge to his longtime fans, and the critics who could crucify or adulate him.  

This record is a challenge; it poses questions about who Jack White is, what he’s capable of, what you think of his music. It has the highest potential to divide fans and turn people off from his music. It is a break from any sort of niche market where he’s the biggest rockstar around, with his own record press, the nostalgia fetishist, and lover of old-timey Robert Johnson blues or Mississippi Delta… that is betrayed by this electronic and modern album.

This album is a challenge because all of those self-imposed rules with instruments that he plays because they are difficult to play, the technology like Pro Tools which allows for the sound that you no longer have to slave to find, the fellow musicians he didn’t know before playing with, all are reversed. Jack White is challenging himself on this album in the same ways those rules used to challenge him. Now, who is Jack White?  He has gone to the underworld.

The fans reaction to this departure is always where your eyes should look, because this sort of rockstar worship, to a much smaller degree today than say 1975, poses the question whether or not they love Jack White for his songs, or for him and his persona and his artistic sense. Do they love the music, or the man behind the music just as much?

This sounds like Jack White challenging himself, asking: What am I after? It sounds nothing like anything he’s worked on before. He’s incorporating many other genres and sound elements to these songs. Most important though, Boarding House Reach sounds modern. It sounds like it came out in 2018.

That is what is most exciting about this record – we’ve not heard this album before. This is not Icky Thump II, nor is it a throw to lo-fi garage; this is a mysterious, strange, surprising, ambitious, challenge and ultimate judge of Jack White and his music. It sounds like a combination of the most popular genres of today, blended together to find some sort of musical synergy, a common thread to unite each of these exotic flavours.

And with songs that border rap – White is truly entering the underworld, turning all expectations of his persona on its ear. If before Jack White the Holy Ghost was just “makin’ the old sound new again” blues with those obvious influences and mentors of his, today he is trying to look into the future and take tools that are around today to make something for today.

Maybe Jack White looks around and sees everyone trying to recapture something, twist it another way that’s passable enough, instead of doing what gets everyone excited about music in the first place and do what the great bands have always done - challenged the listener. That’s what a new sound does – it swipes the slate clean and allows something to come out of it for a whole new generation of artists and musicians who are obviously still listening to the old blues, and The Beatles, and the standards of popular music, to try and create something truly original.

White knows where he comes from. He’s defined himself many different ways, but now, twenty years in the music world, to say: “I’m going to go completely outside of myself, to the great beyond. I have the rules and now I will break them,” is a stunning bit of artistic courage and flair. Conversely it creates a lot less freedom in the moment, for the chance for renewed freedom for many.

White has said that with The White Stripes, him and Meg, thought of each song has three elements. And that intention created a lot of freedom. But without those conditions it can be very difficult to try and create, because limitlessness is very difficult to create out of.

The risk he took was not one he had to take. The altar he stood was comfortable indeed, and people would have no problems continuing to bow to it, they would’ve been happy and content to hear another Blunderbuss or Lazaretto, and would’ve longed perhaps for Elephant II deep down, but would still be pleased with this new, classic Jack White record. No one would criticize him if that’s what happened, he is just doing what Jack White has always done – right?

Someone new could’ve came along and made this sound, and let’s say would’ve been indebted to Jack White, with those classic minimalistic riffs that are absolute ragers, and then combine that with these modern elements – but that’s the artist of the future. Maybe that person isn’t coming. Maybe Jack White sees that this sound will not come unless he does it himself. Why make this album otherwise? He must crave the idea that there is still work to be done.

That thought process is and has been lost of the major artists of the past 20-25 years. The evolution of artists now is much different. They sign these ridiculous record contracts, with looming obligations, and produce similar material to sell albums, and “give the fans what they want,” (an empty phrase if ever there was one). Over time, whatever genre, it starts to become more accessible, and cookie-cutter, and more of your own style, a self-awareness to the point where it could be parody. Metallica and Megadeth were great instances where they turned thrash to rock, hard 70s rock. It’s just rock.

There are few artists today trying to do this. Compare Jack White to Josh Homme. Homme does very creative projects in his own right, but has never foisted an album like this on his fans. Them Crooked Vultures, an album weird enough that I think will get some influence over the years, was not the shock to the system that Boarding House Reach is, nor quite the re-invention. His album with Iggy Pop and Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys, was sufficiently strange, but didn’t break any new ground at the end of the day. They were just songs. Of course, that is not to condemn Homme for trying. The “Desert Sessions” are highly sought after bootleg releases of creative material, and would probably constitute Homme and his musical cronies most experimental and “out-there”. But never has Homme asked such a question as White has just done.

White’s reinvention and Nietzsche-esque revaluation of all values, tossing away those ideals that he so highly thought of, creates the superior artist. And the artist is someone Nietzsche took very seriously.  They strike deeper to his character for what he wants to create with sound. You get the senses now that it’s now just about the sound, but about what sound(s). It’s about the marriage and complexity, or lack thereof, and finding the truth from combining these styles. It’s an unabashed, spitting vocal style, with more production and tracks then usual - an array of originality.

I argue that there could be nothing more exciting. An artist of his caliber challenging you musically: what else would you want? Radiohead, is a comparable artist, that usually presents a challenge to the listener.  The progression of their music has evolved to the point where they are difficult to get to know, and are almost their own genre. But it doesn’t feel like White landed here so much as gone off the deep-end.

White is hitting reset on his public life as rocker to put forth a question to his listeners: where is this going? Me as a songwriter and performer, where is this destination that I will land accidentally? And will I want to land there. And also, here’s something I’ve just made.

He’s pushing the puck in a new direction, one where he is merely an accent to the 2018, experimental, looping sound blend.

Rock music is not in a great state right now, especially the commercial end of rock. What is the identity of rock today? Coldplay? Muse? What a sorry state of affairs. The bands I find most interesting are already lumped into their genre and don’t have the oeiginality needed to take the whole music world by storm. These bands are much more like: If you like punk – you’ll like these guys. Psych rock from the 60’s? I’ve got the group.

These opportunities are taken less and less, and that risk is exciting for both artist and listener. People who like rock music should feed off of this energy, and not cling to those morose clothes its worn for the last 15-20 years.  If you’re playing rock nowadays, and playing the guitar, it seems you have to act like Kurt Cobain without the great rock songs. You have to be introspective and quiet, self-conscious, instead of bombastic and like a kick in the face. And that’s rock music at its core.  

Something like this could open the door to new artists who could try something sounding like this. That’s what makes this an opportunity as much as a statement.

Who knows, though. This is all speculation and could amount to little to the corpse called rock. It’s way too soon to know. But this style of record historically has the potential to influence. Maybe more people will listen to Jack White now, who have typically only listened to experimental or electronic. They might like the blend of rock that’s infused in their domain as well.

Even if you don’t like this album, you should be happy he’s made this record. He’s already made those White Stripes albums; if you enjoy them, put them on whenever you like. We’ve reached a time where there is little that is shocking and surprising in music, that the possibilities have been somewhat exhausted, and any major festival will be short on rock and roll.

So, you can take this, take Greta van Fleet, or take your favourite Aussie band at the moment. Maybe by fiat and force something will come around that will strike it on the head, and all the meaningful stuff will pore out again. But without this album that might be impossible.  

The array of possibilities moving forward has more depth than just a few months ago. 

-Michael Menzies

[psychedelicartwank-blog]

#poetry #philosophicalideas #selfdoubt #art #writing

[psychedelicartwank-blog]

Be Careful With Your Anachronistic Aspirations

There’s no clever excuse to condone, and square away your wild inhibitions of becoming a rock-and-roll star.

The five fruit and veg, a liter of water, a stretch in the morning for those tight calves, a cold shower coupled with the breath - nay, the control - of tenured Tibetan masters - there is no time to gutter your lungs with filth, or drown under the river of brown taps.

There’s too much at stake.

Walks by a man who knows what you’d want:

-To play rock?

Why even respond?

You have credit to build, a degree in the arts to slave for, and a new specialization in network marketing to certify your value. 

-You want to make them dance, at least your t-shirt collection says so.

But whatever melodies bring you sleep, whatever skills the strings allow, what gives the dream the glimmer of reality, a bottle or a time machine?

The life for the rock-and-roller of excess and worship, of scandal and deceit, of art and creation, of relevance and admiration, is over. 

No matter how stoked or stoned you are.

-You’ve got too much to worry about anyways, kiddo.