JACK WHITE - Blunderbuss LP

Label: Third Man

"Blunderbuss" is White's first official solo album, and it comes five years after The White Stripes' last. In the meanwhile, the man has not sat still: he's been making music with The Raconteurs, Dead Weather, Third Man Records, and many others.

This solo outfit is quieter than his other endeavors: there's gentler blues, softer guitars, and cool touches of the electric piano. There's lots of acoustic, given that Meg is missing at the drums. This album is, if not in so many words, most about divorce: each song is tinged with the sadness of failed love and the pain it leaves behind.

Even so, it's sweet and full of warm melodies that stay in the mind and heart to stir up as much joy as they do pain. If you're a Stripes continuant, this album should be in your collection.

Those people should be suitably bucked to learn that Blunderbuss is White at his most strange, contradictory and unfathomable, and therefore at his best.