Jack White’s Boarding House Reach will baffle, befuddle many

JACK WHITE “BOARDING HOUSE REACH” (SONY)

“Who’s with me?!” announce a chorus of people at the beginning of “Corporation,” one of the most gloriously whacked-out songs on this bats-t-crazy new Jack White album. By the end of the five-anda-half-minute funkfest, White is whooping maniacally, in ways we’ve never heard from him — or any other major artist of these times.

It’s worth noting that Jack White was one of many collaborators on Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” album — an album where the carefully constructed superstar took her music places it had never been before, and allowed her voice to sound vulnerable and raw. The result was one of the most acclaimed albums in recent memory. By breaking her own mould, Beyoncé — a superstar known largely for her singles — became even bigger than she already was.

That said, “Lemonade” is considerably more commercial than “Boarding House Reach,” which will baffle and befuddle many. Jack White is pigeonholed as a rock ’n’ roll traditionalist, someone who can write Zeppelin riffs and fiddle-driven country songs and write modern-day blues anthems. For people who want the progression of music to stop in 1982, White is their man.

But White is clearly no one’s man. (And on the androgynous album cover, he’s clearly playing with gender.) “Do you want everything? Then you can have everything. But what is everything?” he asks on “Everything You’ve Ever Learned,” preaching over a track driven by congas, synth strings and fuzz bass. “Respect Commander” has synth stabs lifted from Detroit techno, over a furious live drum beat that pauses only for an organ interlude and then a short slide into a slow Hendrixian blues. The Metallica-esque drumming on “Ice Station Zebra” is interspersed with barrelhouse piano and amateur rapping, including the line, “You create your own box, you don’t have to listen to any of the label-makers printing your obituary.” On top of all that, the album is peppered with equally dramatic and silly spoken-word interludes.

What does this all mean? Either “Sisyphean dreamer” Jack White has lost his mind or he’s actually hitting a creative peak. I vote for the latter.

We’ve come to expect our favourite artists to repeat the same formula ad nauseam, when every hit song seems formulated to get not only on radio but an ad placement and somehow all lead up to a headlining festival slot — a formula that White himself is as guilty of as anyone.

“Boarding House Reach,” on the other hand, embraces absurdist juxtaposition. White’s musical passions are even more eclectic than expected, and he’s determined to stuff it all into every track here. Sure, his rapping sucks, but he’s not making rap music: he’s simply pulling from every possible direction and smashing square pegs until they fit into every hole. People like Beck do this and make it sound slick; White is deliriously sloppy, and therefore ten times more interesting.

Who’s with him? Stream: “Corporation,” “Over and Over and Over,” “Respect Commander”

LINDI ORTEGA “LIBERTY” (INDEPENDENT)

One of the greatest new female country singers of the last 20 years was ready to give it all up. Lindi Ortega lost her record label, had an album shelved, and had anxiety and depression to deal with on top of that. Living in Nashville was wearing the Torontonian down: as one can imagine, for musicians there’s no downtime from your day job in that town. So she packed up and moved to Calgary, but not before making a record of her resilience with the help of some of the best players and co-writers that Nashville has to offer — including the band Steelism and harmonica player Charlie McCoy.

Ortega has always mined a decidedly old-school sound, one that sounded a bit like Patsy Cline fronting a rockabilly band. Here, however, the Mexican-Irish Canadian heads deep into minorkey Morricone territory, with several songs here sounding like Spaghetti Western soundtracks, complete with castanets and mariachi horns. Ortega has always had a knack for melodies that serve the range of her voice, and here she stretches them across languid, melancholy songs that let her linger as long as she likes on any given note.

Lyrically, she structured the record to start out as a downer and conclude with daylight. The last song is a cover of Chilean songwriter Violetta Para’s “Gracias a la Vida (Thank You to Life),” which despite its sentiment of uplift, is still set to a plaintive, minor-key folksong. Maybe because, as Ortega has always known, it’s the blues that makes you feel so good.

Stream: “Til My Dying Day,” “The Comeback Kid,” “Liberty”