By Christopher David,<\/p>\n
While Lollapalooza was across town offering its varying degrees of pop, hip-hop and rock to a crowd that could fill a small city, the Metro played host to one of the greatest musical forces of nature in contemporary music in advance of Jack White’s headlining Lolla slot on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Hitting the stage to a savagely raucous version of \u201cOver and Over and Over\u201d from his brilliant new album Boarding House Reach<\/em>, musician, label-runner, and general raconteur White delivered two hours of rock n\u2019 roll catharsis in a setlist that spanned his various projects from earliest days of The White Stripes to his most recent work.<\/p>\n White\u2019s work ethic is exhausting for most of us to even consider, and after having bounced back and forth with two different backing bands in 2012 (one all male and one all female), and then honing that into an all-star lineup featuring violinist Lillie Mae for 2014\u2019s Lazaretto<\/em> tour, he\u2019s finally arrived at arguably his best lineup to date. Drummer Carla Azar\u2014surely one of the most underrated powerhouse drummers on earth, though not for long after this stint\u2014bassist Dominic Davis, and keyboardists Neal Evans and Quincy McCrary provide the perfect accompaniment to both classic White Stripes and Raconteurs\u2019 tunes as well as rounding out the more experimental sound of Boarding House Reach. <\/em><\/p>\n Straight-forward rockers like the Stripes\u2019 classic \u201cHotel Yorba\u201d (reimagined as a full-on, bluegrass style number) and \u201cThe Hardest Button to Button\u201d benefited from a looser arrangement that included piano and dynamic fluctuations from Azar and Davis, and \u201cBlunderbuss,\u201d the title track from White\u2019s 2012 solo debut, went the opposite direction, its studio delicacy traded for crashing guitar chords that called to mind the White Stripes\u2019 live cover of Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cIsis\u201d that used to occasionally appear way back in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n The looser, more spontaneous approach to recording that led to White\u2019s new album was in top form on \u201cRespect Commander,\u201d which thumps and blips its way through a mix of electronic beats and actual drums before breaking down into a sultry, grungy blues that\u2019s long been White\u2019s signature, and the fuzzy, octave-shifted vocals of The Dead Weather\u2019s \u201cI Cut Like A Buffalo\u201d ratcheted that same fuzzy crunch to a point of frenzy.<\/p>\n \u201cToday was one of the best days of my life,\u201d he said with a grin at one point, holding aloft a giant number 3 from the Wrigley Field scoreboard, a souvenir from Tom Ricketts himself earlier in the day on the back of an Anthony Rizzo homer. \u201cLook at this! Are you fucking kidding me?\u201d The crowd roared with approval at his display of bold-faced fandom, and by the time \u201cConnected by Love\u201d hit and turned the Metro into a stadium worthy singalong, one had a full view of White\u2019s ability to seamlessly blend roots blues with everything that made rock n\u2019 roll and early soul music wicked and sexy. It\u2019s the kind of thing that\u2019s either in your blood or it\u2019s not – and fortunately, Jack White has enough for all of us.<\/p>\n – No photos were allowed at this show. Not even cell phones. Sorry –\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Setlist: Jack White – Metro, Chicago, IL, August 4, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n By Christopher David, While Lollapalooza was across town offering its varying degrees of pop, hip-hop and rock to a crowd that could fill a small city, the Metro played host […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-news","category-features","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n