Jack White’s Brisbane show an emphatic lesson in textbook rock ‘n’ roll
Anyone grumbling that rock 'n' roll is dead 'n' buried needs to park themselves in front of this man and his exceptional band.
Anyone grumbling that rock ‘n’ roll is dead ‘n’ buried needs to park themselves in front of the nearest stage where Jack White and his band happens to be playing. What they’ll see and hear there will enliven even the most jaded rocker who posits that the genre’s apogee was yesterday.
Flowing through White is the spirit of every great guitarist to ever sell their soul for a glimmer of facility with six strings under their fingers, from Robert Johnson onwards. It’s too much pressure to place on one man, and yet watching him sonically dominate 3000 fans on Thursday night, what stood out strongest was the ease with which he carried himself as master of ceremonies.
White’s first Australian tour in 12 years began at Brisbane’s Fortitude Music Hall, which also marked his first solo concert in the Queensland capital.
In the past dozen years since his debut solo album, 2012’s Blunderbuss, the American singer-songwriter has been remarkably productive, with eight album releases across his various projects. On this visit, he’s backed by a new band: after a 2022 one-off appearance at Adelaide’s debut Harvest Rock festival, bassist Dominic Davis is the only returning player, with Patrick Keeler joining on drums and Bobby Emmett on keys.
Now touring in support of his sixth solo album No Name – initially released secretly on vinyl in July, then encouraged to be shared freely online as a bootleg, before being released officially two weeks later – it was these songs that earned the majority of the quartet’s attention, with seven of its 13 tracks making an appearance.
Many of these new songs are driven by an impressively wide range of kinetic guitar riffs that feel at once fresh and familiar. We’re now seven or so decades into the great rock ‘n’ roll experiment, and under White’s leadership, we continue to be shaken all night long by an innovative, diverse guitar attack.
Watching him, as he worked over several instruments – including a stunning black-and-yellow, custom-made Fender Triplecaster – across a 105-minute performance that embodied spontaneity, you got the feeling that he’s got plenty more of those electric ideas stored in the vault in his skull.
At each concert, White is the architect and master builder, but he can’t do it all himself on stage. His trusted tradesmen rolled up their sleeves and got to work, and their combined efforts gave an emphatic lesson in textbook rock ‘n’ roll executed with intensity, ferocity and gripping drama, as the four players pinballed from one another in service of the music.
Of which there was much: in the main set, 90 minutes passed with scarcely a gap between songs, as a flow state formed and held firm while they bounced between material new and old, including several singles from the catalogue of the White Stripes, the Detroit duo that became globally popular during the last rock revival at the turn of the century.
Naturally enough, these songs thrilled the crowd, who luxuriated in ripping takes on Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Hotel Yorba, Black Math and Blue Orchid – as well as the mighty, inevitable final encore of his signature song, Seven Nation Army, whose full-throated crowd chant-along must rank among the seven wonders of the live musical world.
It was great to be reminded of where White had made his name, and these were played with passionate force that underlined the power of the original recordings.
But it was the newest songs that rocked hardest: Old Scratch Blues, Underground and It’s Rough on Rats chief among them. All of which were played with a striking sense of looseness, as if they had been written between soundcheck and showtime, and were being played for us for the first time.
It’s worth pausing to reflect on this fact: at 49, White has been issuing albums for 25 years. He’s now released as many solo records as he did with the White Stripes, which called it quits in 2007 after six LPs.
Add to that three albums apiece with his other bands, the Dead Weather and the Saboteurs, and it’s an astonishing body of work – and yet it’s the newest work, released earlier this year, that resonated strongest in concert.
The focus on No Name meant that he didn’t play a single track from 2022’s excellent Fear of the Dawn, but that’s long been the problem with White: too many great songs, too little time.
Strangest of all, perhaps, was recalling that he began his musical life as a drummer. The instrument for which he’s become known as a world-leading, heroic player? “When I’ve got a guitar on, I feel uncomfortable, and maybe if anything good comes out of it, it’s because of that,” he told The Australian in 2019. “It doesn’t feel like an extension of me – it feels like a lot of hard work.”
It didn’t feel that way out on the floor on Thursday night, where White presented as firmly comfortable and in control of his various instruments, including his distinctive yelped vocal style, which added another enticing colour to a lighting palette which lent heavily on blues and whites.
His supreme command called to mind watching Taylor Swift at the MCG earlier this year, but where Swift’s control of her domain was all about nailing every look, gesture, angle and pose so that they reached the back row of the top level of a stadium, White’s command took a much rougher shape: perfection wasn’t an obvious goal, and indeed the rugged roughness of the band’s playing was part of the attraction.
As a quartet, they played hard and fast, with complete trust in one another, while always looking to the man in the middle for his next move, his next look, his next spontaneous musical thought – and the next song he wanted them to play, for this is the rare act to walk on stage each night without setlists taped to the floor near their feet.
Instead, White prefers to make calls on the fly mid-set, either by announcing it verbally to his bandmates or beginning to play the next song himself, all the while knowing that they’ll fall in behind him. It’s a spectacular highwire act, and it’s engrossing to witness.
“When a show begins, none of us knows what’s going to happen,” he told The Australian in 2022. “It could be great or it could be boring; we’ll see what happens. But if the crowd keeps feeding it and pushing, usually it just gets better and better and better because there’s this inspiration and electricity coming at you. That’s what I’m looking for.”
On Thursday night in Brisbane, White certainly found it.
Jack White’s eight-date No Name tour continues in Ballarat (Friday) and Melbourne (Saturday, Monday and Tuesday), followed by Hobart (December 11) and Sydney (December 13 + 14).
More Coverage
