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Musician Jack White
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Jim Dyson/Getty Images
Album of the week:
The moment you ask yourself whether you're happy, you've already lost your luck, this is how one could translate the advice that US musician Jack White gives right at the beginning: »Ask yourself if you're happy and then cease to be/ That's a tip from you to me,« he sings, cheekily adapting and modifying a famous quote from the British liberalism philosopher John Stuart Mill. White also appropriates a famous harmony from a Led Zeppelin classic here quite boldly , although he does not sing »And it makes me wonder«, but »Will I be alone tonight?« and »Will love leave me alone tonight?«: His »Stairway to Heaven« is more of a convoluted »Strangeway«, and » Entering Heaven Alive, White's fifth solo album after The White Stripes, is a fascinating portrait of a musician at the peak of his powerswho nevertheless quarrels with himself, the world and the happiness he has found.
Saturation isn't a word that seems to exist in the 47-year-old Detroit native's vocabulary.
Famed for his eccentricities as much as his analogue infatuation, the guitarist tends to go to extremes in order to push himself to new challenges (he can recognize every Beatles song by the first bar, by the way).
Before he wrote his new songs, he underwent a five-day fasting cure, which he says released unexpected energies.
"It was as if something completely new was coming out of me," he says in the SPIEGEL interview.
For fans familiar with White's work, what he offers on the largely acoustic album may not seem all that new: he has already proven in the past that he is an excellent, nuanced songwriter who can do more than just minimalist blues noise, the best Examples can be found in the »Acoustic Recordings 1998 – 2016« collection.
For those who only want the noise of the White Stripes from White, he already blasted a brutal, riff-heavy broadside with "Fear of the Dawn" in April, on the second album this year it's getting quieter, more differentiated - and stranger.
For the newly married White (he proposed to musician Olivia Jean on stage in April) it would have been easy to casually throw in a few love-struck songs, like "Queen of the Bees", "If I Die Tomorrow" or "All Along The Way" too, but that
creepyness also lurks in superficially lovely songs like "Love Is Selfish" or "I've Got You Surrounded (With My Love)".
, which always plays a role in White.
The protagonist of these songs, a deeply obsessive, egocentric character, but not necessarily White himself, bathes in the excess of his emotions, wants to clean up with old sins and transgressions, begs God and his beloved for indulgence in order to finally arrive in heaven - but he dares not cross the path myself.
A blues motif, how could it be otherwise.
The true surprise of the album lies in the music, because White shoots ravishingly freely here, not crampedly overambitious like on »Boarding House Reach« or the weirder moments on »Fear of the Dawn«, but with the playfulness of a David Bowie researching the genre.
The ambiguity of the lyrics is also reflected in the music, for example when the somber Johnny Cash folk of "All Along The Way" with its biblical images of burning sugar cane fields suddenly turns into curious reggae rock.
With organ gimmicks, string bombast and percussive silliness, much is reminiscent of the more mischievous albums by the Beatles and the Kinks, or Bowie's rustic morning piece »The Laughing Gnome«.
Deep down, White is a "Carnie," a vaudeville troubadour with a passion for circus and clowning.
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Jack White
Entering Heaven Alive
Label: Third Man Records (Membrane)
Label: Third Man Records (Membrane)
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But the greatest thing is »I've Got You Surrounded (With My Love)« and the total, musical and lyrical nonsense of »Madman in Manhattan«: Here White experiments, whether fasting intoxicated or not, with jazz piano, tries out funk rhythms and, still deeply rooted in folk and blues, finds a whole new groove that points to the future of his sound.
Precisely because he keeps questioning his luck and talent, you have to imagine Jack White as a happy person.
(8.1)
Listened briefly:
She & Him - »Melt Away - A Tribute To Brian Wilson«
You can't ask for more original things than an album of covers by beach boy Brian Wilson, but the eternally nostalgic twee-pop duo She & Him have delivered a heartfelt, no-frills tribute with their seventh album, pardon me, melting away.
Mainly because singer-actress Zooey Deschanel and partner M. Ward (with one exception) forego the obvious hits - in favor of some real nuggets from the rich Beach Boys catalogue.
Take "Deirdre," for example, from 1970, which is stripped of the leisurely jingle-jangle vibe of the original to tease out the urgency with which the eponymous girl is missed so badly.
Or »Till I Die« from 1970,
whose sad verses ("I'm a cork on the ocean/ Floating over the raging sea") are brought out of the cozy sound of the waves by Deschanel's lonely singing and a yearning trumpet.
»Melt Away« from the solo album »Brian Wilson« also gets a new, previously undreamt-of soul sparkle without all the 80s synth droning.
When the 80-year-old master then suddenly mumbles into "Do It Again" himself, one almost feels disturbed in his harmony.
You have to get it right first.
(7.7)
Nina Nastasia - »Riderless Horse«
By the time the fourth song on this album, »This Is Love«, comes tears.
US songwriter Nina Nastasia doesn't need more than her vibrant, but always firm voice and a softly strummed acoustic guitar.
»Drawing blood until we both see black/ We're depleted but we stay on track/ Holding hands through every violent blast«, she sings about the bitter fight for a love that she ultimately lost: in 2020 her private partner, Producer and manager Kennan Gudjonsson describes life in the previous ten years, in which Nastasia did not release an album, as characterized by »unhappiness, overwhelming chaos, mental illness, and my tragically dysfunctional relationship«.
The 56-year-old is considered an eternal insider tip, her debut album »Dogs« from 2000 is
what for lack of better terms is called a cult classic.
The »riderless horse« of their music, which now steers them solely through their sparsely instrumented gothic folk, has lost none of its strength and expressiveness.
The content is sad, but also full of touching confidence and beauty.
Nastasia, the survivor, is now firmly in control of her songwriting - and apparently her life as well.
The songs seek clarity and orientation after a period of gloom.
And when she sings in the light-flooded »Lazy Road«, »I feel that I'm happy for the first time«, you breathe a sigh of relief with her.
The content is sad, but also full of touching confidence and beauty.
Nastasia, the survivor, is now firmly in control of her songwriting - and apparently her life as well.
The songs seek clarity and orientation after a period of gloom.
And when she sings "I feel that I'm happy for the first time" in the light-flooded "Lazy Road", you breathe a sigh of relief with her.
The content is sad, but also full of touching confidence and beauty.
Nastasia, the survivor, is now firmly in control of her songwriting - and apparently her life as well.
The songs seek clarity and orientation after a period of gloom.
And when she sings in the light-flooded »Lazy Road«, »I feel that I'm happy for the first time«, you breathe a sigh of relief with her.
(7.9)
Jeff Beck & Johnny Depp - »18«
If it weren't for actor and musician Johnny Depp, who wades through all sorts of private swamps, on this album, it probably wouldn't even be mentioned.
Although one might wonder what possessed veteran British guitar hero Jeff Beck to engage Depp as the singer for this collection of impertinences and covers.
He should still have enough nostalgic audiences for his not always inspired instrumental gibberish (here, among others, Davy Spillane's "Midnight Walker" and "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" by the Beach Boys).
Did he do himself a favor with Depp as a partner?
Rather not.
That the Hollywood star is not the biggest crooner, but rather babbles robotically and hoarsely while singing,
has been known since the 90s and bands like P, most recently the "Pirates of the Caribbean" star rumbled into rock retirement age with the Hollywood Vampires.
For "18" (but it's only 13 songs), he credited Hedy Lamar with two pitifully self-pitying tracks ("I don't believe in humans anymore"), "Sad Motherfuckin' Parade" and "This Is A Song For Miss." which Beck can't think of much more than dull industrial blues groove on the one hand and power ballad nonsense on the other.
At the latest after the execution of Killing Joke's »Death And Resurrection Show« (the second song on the album) one feels mentally violated.
With "Caroline No" another Beach Boys classic is disenchanted, in the white-bread-flabby "What's Going On" version (yes, really) Depp manages to do something like singing.
In this completely erratic hodgepodge of atrocities, the cover of "Venus In Furs" alone makes sense, at least on the meta level, even if Lou Reed might be turning in his grave at the gross goth-pomp implementation: The song is known to be about a sado -Maso relationship.
It's okay.
(1.0)
Intercepted is on summer break! You will read the next column on August 19th.