Jack White continues his career renaissance with Frozen Charlotte, a follow-up to the superb No Name that embraces brutal, squalid blues-rock. The album, released on Third Man Records, finds the 51-year-old digging his heels in with stripped-back songs and nasty, anarchic riffs, though it ultimately feels a little samey.
A Renaissance for Jack White
After establishing himself as a defining figure of 21st-century rock with the White Stripes, White's influence seemed to outweigh his output by the mid-2010s. However, in 2024, No Name was released with little fanfare—unlabelled copies slipped into purchases at Third Man stores—to overwhelmingly positive response. The back-to-basics approach reminded fans that beneath the huckster magician vibe, White still deserved his stature.
Now, Frozen Charlotte continues this fan service, wholly embracing the more brutal side of 70s blues rock. Opener “GOD and the Broken Ribs” sets the tone with a bolshie retelling of the Genesis story, White rapping over a muscular blues chug: “Watch me rock, then I roll baby / And it’s let me out, let me out, let me shout / Right from my soul, with salt and coal / Now listen to me roll with it.”
Production and Instrumentation Focus
The 40-odd minutes that follow are loud and ostentatious, seemingly more focused on production and instrumentation than the witty, political No Name. Heavy delay effects give “Raising the Grain” a wobbly, destabilised atmosphere, as White sings about boiling in linseed oil before entering the catacombs. “You’ll Never Fix Me” is an old-fashioned garage barnstormer, with defiant lyrics less important than the immense sense of rebellion in White and his band’s nasty riffs.
As on No Name, it is enjoyable to hear White back in no-frills mode with fury and meanness in his voice that sells lines like “click clack, back track, tick tock, smack talk”. This pure fan service is preferable to the overblown solo records that preceded No Name, and will likely feel better live than 2022’s clowny Fear of the Dawn.
Lack of Stylistic Variance
However, Frozen Charlotte can be a lot. Unlike No Name, there is little stylistic variance between songs. By the time you reach “She’s in a Frenzy,” you wonder if the album has looped back to the start, with the same overdriven guitar solos and sneery punk-rap. The album works best when leaving this zone, as on “Neighbors Blues,” a genuinely bonkers potboiler that plays like a theme song for the HBO show Neighbors. The simmering aggression renders the track more effective in creating tension than many others, which tend to play their hands early, neutering White’s great sense of dynamics.
It’s an ironic quirk: this record may be part of White’s stripped-down renaissance, but it might have been helped by an even more back-to-basics approach.
