REVIEW: All work and no phones make Jack White a clever boy
You won’t see any selfies on social media from your buddy at the Jack White Canadian tour opener in Edmonton on Friday night – ditto for any video clips of precious moments.
By completely banning all cell phones, the Detroit rocker and former White Stripes frontman ensured that the likes of Instagram, Twitter and even old-school Facebook would be post-free of frozen moments – courtesy of the 6,000-plus that crammed the concert bowl at Rogers Place. Argue all you want about this example of White’s eccentricities, but the directive was his way of ensuring that the show would become a distraction-free, intimate musical experience.
It was.
The millennials who showed up seemed to feel deprived of those life-giving electronic impulses. The laments of “I don’t know what I’ll do without my phone!” that permeated the bleachers before showtime was like an amusing re-enactment of Trainspotting, with addicts hankering for a fix of digital joy. Elder Gen-X patrons who came of age when the Kinsmen Fieldhouse hosted concerts adapted more easily – as they whipped out their trusty Bic lighters in the slow moments, instead of relying on their mini-monolithic gadgets to create their own makeshift light shows.
White’s idea of going intimate (albeit not so interactive) was no small feat given the arena ecosystem. He and his four-piece outfit took to a stage bathed in corpse-blue luminescence with a jam session mentality not unlike a pick-up format, more at home in a garage or front porch. Sometimes it worked, especially with White’s reputation for eschewing set lists in favour of guitar solos hammered out at length until everyone in the band got on board. Other times those colourful and sometimes sloppy passages wafted into self indulgence to the point where even the more zealous disciples on the floor grew weary.
It was most obvious when White showcased work from his third and latest solo album Boarding House Reach, an eclectic and ambitious undertaking with enough detours to test the loyalty of even his biggest fans. The fact that a few entries from the current outing are mainly instrumental added to the confusion over whether it was another song, or a piece of filler begging for the unit to kick in.
The band opened with Over and Over and Over from the new album, revisiting the unfettered, riff-heavy terrain explored during the White Stripes era. Additional cuts had White dipping heavily into 1970s R&B with Corporation and Respect Commander doubling as undisguised nods to pioneers like Parliament-Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone. Organ-heavy ditties like Why Walk the Dog? and Connected By Love showcased White’s more melancholy side.
Naturally, White Stripes classics were compulsory – and to that end, White didn’t disappoint with such offerings as Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Offend in Every Way, the southern-fried Hotel Yorba and the encore-closing Seven Nation Army. It was in those selections that the band really shone. Drummer Carla Azar was technically proficient and spot-on with her execution that at times aped original White Stripes timekeeper Meg White, while bassist Dominic Davis filled in the bottom end void nicely.
Keyboardists Neal Evans and Quincy McCrary stepped up nicely, matching Whites leads stroke for stroke when parts of the set called for some string and ivory interplay. When other parts of the evening didn’t call for extensive noodling, the duo laid down some superlative beds on pieces like the ballad-laden Love Interruption and the eerie instrumental High Ball Stepper.
Together, the band was loose enough to go with the flow, yet tight enough to change direction with every whimsical detour White would toss at them. Sometimes those diverted angles of attack worked, but on other occasions, the unit struggled to find the right balance to keep the momentum going.
White’s live approach can be called a sonic lab experiment delivered from the seats of those proverbial pants – but perhaps those occasional failings are best left off those preening social media platforms.
Photos by David James Swanson (official tour photographer)
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