Jack White's 'Lazaretto' Is a Diverse Winner

Has there ever been a more exciting album with a worse opening track than Lazaretto?

Jack White's latest solo effort begins with the chest-beating "Three Women," a instrumentally fussy (yet melodically generic) blues atrocity in which White brags about a trio of affairs. He reduces the women's characteristics down to the colour of the hair -- "red, blonde and brunette" -- and this gives way to a lazy refrain in which he sings "lawdy lawd" ad nauseam.

It's somewhat comforting to know that the song isn't autobiographical, since it's an adaptation of pioneering bluesman Blind Willie McTell's "Three Women Blues." Still, considering White's extremely public fallout with his ex-wife Karen Elson -- culminating in her filing a restraining order against him last summer -- to begin his album with a song about heartless philandering isn't particularly flattering.

Despite this terrible first impression, Lazaretto is another fascinating -- albeit sightly uneven -- album from the former White Stripes frontman. The bluesy "Three Women" is followed in succession by the funky rap-rock title cut, the countrified folk duet "Temporary Ground" (which features a chorus sung by fiddler Lillie Mae Rische), and the simmering spaghetti western drama of "Would You Fight for My Love?" That's a hell of a lot of stylistic territory to cover in just four songs.

For the most part, the crazier the songs get, the better: the instrumental "High Ball Stepper" is a fractured blues freakout that's sliced through with shards of chilling fiddle, jazzy piano quirks and backmasked psychedelia.

"That Black Bat Licorice" is similarly frenzied with its juxtaposition of hip-hop grooves, distorted heaviness and rustic mandolin and fiddle. It's got all of the cocksure swagger of "Three Women" but none of the oversexed machismo, with White spitting, "I fantasize about the hospital, the army, asylum, confinement, in prison / Any place where there's a cot to clear my vision."

These songs are good enough to forgive the odd misstep: "Just One Drink" is a by-the-numbers alt-country snoozer that is rendered redundant when White uses the exact same turnaround melody as "That Black Bat Licorice" (compare the "The older and older I am" from "Drink" to "You need to behave yourself, boy" from "Licorice"). And the country ballad "Entitlement" posits White as a bitter curmudgeon as he whinges about kids these days and suggests, "The world may be spoiled and getting worse every day." Given White's well-documented resistance to modern technology, it comes across as self-parody.

Still, such blunders are all part and parcel of the record's inventive diversity. Including White's past work with the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, this is his 12th LP overall; that he hasn't yet slipped into predictable complacency makes Lazaretto a winner despite its flaws.