Why is Jack White’s Lazaretto on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
The Jack White Experience produces another successful experiment.
What does Jack White’s Lazaretto mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
It’s safe to say that I’m a Jack White superfan. I’ll never forget the first time I heard The White Stripes. I was driving home from work – a miserably long commute I had in the Bay Area between Silicon Valley and Berkeley – and “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” played on the radio (this was back when I listened to terrestrial radio!).
I wondered if it was a classic rock band from the 1970s that I had never heard before. What I knew for sure was that it was really good and quite different than anything I had heard before and that I absolutely wanted to hear more.
While I sometimes find Jack White’s solo work to be a little uneven, I see it in terms of his continually pushing himself as an artist. Not all experiments are going to work, and something you can easily say about White is that he never rests easy; he’s always pushing for something different, trying to go to new places musically.
The highs on Lazaretto far outweigh the lows so we can easily say that it’s a successful experiment.
Over time, “Temporary Ground” has slid into position as my favorite song on Lazaretto. It’s a gentle and beautiful rock song inflected with folk and country influences, and the participation of Lillie Mae Rische on both vocals and violin is outstanding.
It’s the softer material on Lazaretto that I tend to gravitate to overall (which is interesting because there are many albums that you’ll see on the best 1,000 albums ever where the opposite tends to be the case). Another great example is “I Think I Found The Culprit.” Like many great White Stripes and Raconteurs songs, it’s based on a compelling jangling piano hook, and its soaring background vocals and string accompaniment are just great.
“That Black Bat Licorice” has a dark, stomping blues punk groove that’s very much akin to The Dead Weather’s best work.
Some stats & info about Jack White’s Lazaretto
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Indie Rock, Rock Music, Garage Rock Revival
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4 out of 5 stars
- When was Lazaretto released? 2014
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #680 out of 1,000
Jack White’s Lazaretto on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.