MUSIC PREMIERES
Jack White’s four solo albums in the years that followed the breakup of the White Stripes are explorations of styles that show multiple other sides of his musicianship, veering into R&B and blues and experimental styles far from the straight-ahead, blistering rock and roll he’d laid down with the band that put him on the map. Those albums are all cool and often great, but it’s hard to deny that although his fans like, respect and appreciate them — along with side projects like the Raconteurs and Dead Weather — secretly they wished he’d just put together a small rock band, plug in, turn the volume up and let rip.
Well, that’s exactly what he did with his fiery new album “No Name,” and he did that and lots more over the course of a 90-minute set that shook the floor of the intimate 800-capacity White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the Hudson from Manhattan. With just drummer Patrick Keller, bassist Dominic Davis and keyboardist Bobby Emmett in tow, he blazed through most of the new album and a Muddy Waters cover before digging deep into White Stripes classics for most of the rest of the night.
There was no blue hair or elaborate costumes or multiple musicians — he wore a black jacket (doffed midway through the show) and a black tee and his hair is back to its natural, wavy, parted-in-the-middle black. The show technically had an 18-song setlist, but he called a lot of audibles, leading the band on brief jams and dramatic finales with a wave of his hand or a jab of his guitar neck; Emmett’s roaring Hammond B-3 organ provided a beefy counterpart to White’s blasting power chords. He played a lot of slide guitar — always on a gorgeous old hollow-body — and the audience through several singalongs and talked often, although usually the only words most of us could understand were “Jersey!” and “Rock and roll!”
The show was curiously divided in half, as if there were two halves: He and the band took the stage at 9:30 and tore through most of the new album, dipping back into White Stripes terrain with deeper cuts like “Black Math,” “Suzy Lee” and “Catch Hell Blues.” After 45 minutes he and the band left the stage but quickly came back for what at first seemed like an encore: powerful versions of the Raconteurs’ “Broken Boy Soldier” and a long take of the stadium singalong “Seven Nation Army,” with him stopping the band to let the audience sing the song’s iconic riff. But then they kept going — White’s guitar tech (who was dressed more elaborately than anyone in the band) kept bringing him guitars and the classics kept coming: “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” “Fell in Love With a Girl,” and finally “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” with a couple of new songs thrown in. Right at 11 p.m., as he led the band through another drawn-out jam, he waved his hands and said “That’s it!” and they tore through a drawn-out finale, and the sweaty crowd filed out onto Newark Avenue.
In classic contrarian fashion, White has basically said that the band isn’t really doing a tour but just playing shows, with union halls and similar small venues on the docket — there are a handful of U.S. and U.K. dates scheduled this fall, with hopefully more to come.
Traditional, straight-ahead, guitar-driven rock and roll has been in a sad place for the last couple of decades — it has little direct connection to the music that’s popular today, except for country, and in many ways the White Stripes seem like the last great rock band, or at least the last one to really move the culture into maybe-not-so-new but truly exciting places. But as “No Name” and Monday night’s concert show, if there’s one person to keep it alive and kicking, it’s Jack White.
Setlist (from setlist.fm)
Old Scratch Blues
That’s How I’m Feeling
Tom Cat (Muddy Waters cover)
It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking)
Black Math
Archbishop Harold Holmes
Why Walk a Dog?
Bombing Out
Underground
Suzy Lee
Catch Hell Blues
Encore:
Broken Boy Soldier
Seven Nation Army
I’m Slowly Turning Into You
Freedom at 21
Fell in Love With a Girl
What’s the Rumpus?
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
MUSIC PREMIERES
Lykke Li didn’t hold back when speaking about the making of her sixth studio album, ‘The Afterparty’, during a listening session in Los Angeles earlier this year. “Let’s talk about the album. It was a motherfucker to make,” she admitted to the crowd. While balancing motherhood, the chaos of modern culture shaped by Trump and AI, and her own desire to create something more “extroverted, impulsive and chaotic” than ‘EYEYE’, as she previously shared with NME, the Swedish alt pop star arrived at a headspace that “feels like it’s 4am and the sun is going to rise”. The record captures that blurry final moment before regret, exhaustion and reality settle in, which makes it even more emotional considering she has hinted this could potentially be her final album.
There is something fitting about how brief the project feels. With only nine tracks running across 24 minutes, it never overstays its welcome. Lykke immediately drops listeners into the atmosphere with opener ‘Not Gon Cry’, painting a picture of those lonely early morning hours with the line, “No angels here tonight, no dancing queens.” Alongside the shadowy pulse of ‘Happy Now’ and the twisted disco energy of ‘Lucky Now’, she revisits the emotional yet dance driven spirit of her earlier material while blending in the sharper, more confident attitude heard on ‘So Sad, So Sexy’ and the shimmering influence of her 2019 Mark Ronson collaboration ‘Late Night Feelings’.
The emotional fallout begins to settle in quickly. ‘Famous Last Words’ carries a lush orchestral sadness as Lykke reflects on lessons that only came after years of chaos and late nights, confessing, “I had to crash and burn to tell the tale.” Then comes ‘Future Fear’, a delicate acoustic track with robotic textures that stares directly into anxiety and uncertainty with the chilling question, “I’m going to a dark place, do you need anything?” Meanwhile, ‘So Happy I Could Die’ glows like sunrise after a sleepless night, holding onto fleeting moments as she sings about “slipping through the hourglass”.
Throughout the album, Lykke Li vividly captures the beauty and wreckage of reckless nights with the vulnerability that has always defined her music. On ‘Sick Of Love’, she channels heartbreak into revenge, wanting to “make you beg for it” after rejection in a way that feels spiritually connected to Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’. One of the strongest moments arrives with ‘Knife In The Heart’, a track that fully embraces her desire to become the “rock god” and “fuck boy” she spoke about, firing back at anyone who tries to tear her down with the words “you can spit, you can walk on me” while delivering one of the catchiest songs she has created in years.
Closing track ‘Euphoria’ leaves behind the same bittersweet feeling that runs through the rest of the album. With sweeping strings, pulsing beats and emotional intensity, Lykke Li reminds listeners that nothing lasts forever as she sings, “Player play your song, waste the night away”. Like the fading energy of the perfect night out, ‘The Afterparty’ ends in a haze of beauty and uncertainty. If this truly is her farewell, she leaves with one final intoxicating statement, though it still feels like there could be another chapter waiting.
