While Jack White largely wrapped up his extensive Supply Chain Issues Tour last year, he’s kept the ball rolling with a smattering of smaller gigs over the last couple of months, and this week he brought the party to New York City. In town for a performance on Saturday Night Live a few days later, White spent Wednesday night (2/22) in Bushwick shaking the rafters of the 1,800-capacity Brooklyn Steel with a set that balanced newer material with a bevy of hits and crowd favorites with thunderous energy.
Following a powerful performance from gothic rocker (and Jack’s wife) Olivia Jean, White took the stage, dressed in a glittering black jacket, and opened the show with the same trio of songs that kicked off his arena show at Barclays Center last Spring; the buzzing one-two punch of “Taking Me Back” and “Fear of the Dawn” followed by the White Stripes heavy-hitter “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”, which closed out with a fiery jam as keyboardist Quincy McRary’s grimy organ work bounced of White’s slicing guitar. The band locked into a tight and dirty groove on “Hi-De-Ho”, another cut off last years’ Fear of the Dawn, before White took a seat at the piano for “Apple Blossom”, a Stripes tune that had been a rarity in his live sets before appearing more regularly last year. Dedicating the song to his ex-wife – musician and model Karen Elson – who was in attendance, Jack took a moment to thank and appreciate the friends he had in the audience, noting how he’s learned to take stock of the people in his life more as he’s aged.
From there he moved into a string of acoustic cuts, starting with “If I Die Tomorrow”, off his second album of last year Entering Heaven Alive, followed by a rendition of Boarding House Reach’s “What’s Done Is Done” dedicated with a sneer to Republican politicians Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Ron DeSantis, who White said has “slime in their veins instead of hot blood”. The crowd whooped and hollered in agreement and was rewarded with a stellar pair of White Stripes classics. First up was a rollicking version of “Hotel Yorba” with McCrary hopping from piano over organ at Jack’s request to give the song a little extra juice. Then as White switched over to an electric guitar he led a quick transition into “Fell In Love With A Girl”, ripping into the song with the kind of deranged punk energy that’s always been one of his most exciting musical modes, before slowing it down to a thumping groove on the final chorus.
White continued to pull from across his discography for the rest of the set, stringing together the Stripes’ “I Think I Smell A Rat” and The Dead Weather’s “I Cut Like a Buffalo” with standout drum work from Daru Jones on both as he flipped from the theatrical hits of the former to the industrial stomp of the latter and “Lazaretto” continued to prove itself one of the strongest tunes in Jack’s solo catalog as the band laid into the 2014 tune with aplomb. A truly heartwarming rendition of “We’re Going To Be Friends”, which had the whole room singing along and even someone in the crowd shaking a tambourine above their head as Jack’s face lit up with a grin, was followed by another pair of Entering Heaven tracks, “A Tip From You to Me” and the apt “A Madman from Manhattan”. After cycling through a few different guitar choices as the band churned behind him White landed on his archtop slide and started into the crackling squall of “Catch Hell Blues” before rounding things out with “Ball and Biscuit”, a vehicle for White to display his maniacal guitar wizardry as he wrung notes out of layers of feedback and fuzz.
As the musicians returned to the stage for the encore the crowd was positively roaring and, feeding off the energy, the band started off into The Raconteurs’ staple “Steady As She Goes,” which rose from a funky intro – with White and McCrary trading off riffs on guitar and synth – into one of their best performances of the song to date, reaching full throttle as the crowd jumped and head banged along before White came off the mic to lead the audience into the song’s sing-along finale. Things stayed heated with a walloping “Icky Thump” and the frenetic hip-hop groove of “What’s The Trick” before Jack unleashed another live rarity on the crowd, the prog-punk White Stripes banger “Blue Orchid”, which started off slow and menacing before picking things up on the second verse and charging ahead. The night ended as always with “Seven Nation Army”, momentarily turning the intimate Brooklyn club into a football stadium as the iconic riff reverberated from Jack’s guitar and nearly every voice in the room.
As the song ended the band was met with a massive wall of cheers as White exclaimed, “This is the loudest crowd I’ve ever heard in Brooklyn!” He might have been right. Even though he played a venue ten times the size less than a year earlier, there was palpable electricity coursing through Brooklyn Steel on Wednesday and he could clearly feel it. He’ll likely be back in the big rooms next time around, but one can only hope he keeps playing these kinds of intimate shows, his fans would surely be thankful for them.
One Response
The WORST BAND Jack White, I ever heard! No rhythm, no beat, and just a plan old noise maker without a beat. Just horrible