Once the figurehead of "I don't have a smartphone" discourse, Jack White has become an extremely online Instagram guy, raging out about Donald Trump on a regular basis. He's even given the president a hashtag: #twaat, an acronym for "The Worst American of All Time."Like a lot of us, being glued to the political circus doesn't seem to be doing wonders for White's well-being. "Feeling content / Making content," he sneers on "Making Contact," echoing a play on words that didn't work out too well for Arcade Fire back in 2017. In the lead-up to Frozen Charlotte, he's been posting cynical IG content making fun of social media engagement, and even temporarily changed the album title to Frozen Charlatan — a misheard lyric from the single "G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs" ("I'm a penny dreadful and a frozen Charlotte and...") serving as a snarky reflection of online disinformation. In a post-truth world, why not offer pre-saves with a fake album title?Frozen Charlotte dolls were cheap, mass-produced porcelain figurines popular in Germany in the Victorian period — but, more pertinently here, the title refers to a traditional folk ballad about a vain girl who froze to death because she wanted to show off her dress. We're all Charlotte these days, showing off on social media even though we know full well how bad it is for us. (The other half of the titular lyric, "penny dreadful," refers to cheap, pulpy stories of criminals and the supernatural, which feels similarly apropos to the news cycle.)"Welcome to the end of the world," White declares on "G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs," the song's two-chord stomp throwing back to the caveman garage blues he's been making since his earliest days in the White Stripes (like debut album cuts "Jimmy the Exploder" or "The Big Three Killed My Baby"). White has been a doomsayer for a long time now — see the old-man-yells-at-cloud country ballad "Entitlement" from 2014's Lazaretto — but his misanthropy is particularly potent in Trump's America. "Ain't no obstacles that are stronger than greed," White declares on the swampy blues strut of "All Alone Again"; "Making Contact" echoes anti-vax ignorance with lines about salmonella and how "you can catch it and still deny it / Start a lie and make sure other people buy it"; the 12-bar swagger of "Neighbors Blues" chronicles NIMBYism and distrust between neighbours.Chaotic times have a way of driving us back into our comfort zones (I know I wasn't the only one who rewatched all of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Stranger Things during pandemic lockdowns). So too does it seem to be for White, who offers up his most consistently bluesy offering since the early 2000s. Frozen Charlotte is a continuation of the streamlined rippers of 2024's No Name, although there's nothing here as straightforwardly catchy as "That's How I'm Feeling." Instead, Frozen Charlotte is a showcase for White's guitar playing; Third Man Hardware's freaky guitar pedals add sonic trickery that the typical rock production lacks, White's often-wacky soloing becoming almost indistinguishable from Bobby Emmett's jagged-glass organ shards amidst the fuzzy robo riffs of "Making Contact."Like Babe Ruth pointing to the centre field bleachers, White has always loved calling his shot, boasting "Alright, listen," before establishing himself as a generational guitar hero with the extended solos of the White Stripes' "Ball and Biscuit." He's back it again here: "Looks like we got a / Little place to do the / Things we need to do now / And it'll sound like this…" he announces on "G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs," right before the band cuts out and he fires off a couple bars' worth of barbed licks.As usual, White has as much cocky swagger as anyone. Frozen Charlotte certainly isn't an escape from modern ills, but thanks to his bravado, White still finds a way to have fun even while seething about our historical moment. "I'm shooting up a flare," he yelps in harmony on "There's Nobody There." And that's what Frozen Charlotte effectively is — not a call for solidarity, exactly, but an S.O.S. to attract fellow survivors of a broken America.
Wavelength
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