{"id":749043,"date":"2026-07-07T19:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T19:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/749043\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T19:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T19:19:11","slug":"jack-whites-frozen-charlotte-is-a-guitar-god-comedy-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/749043\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack White’s Frozen Charlotte Is a Guitar God Comedy: Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack White<\/a>\u2018s new album\u00a0Frozen Charlotte\u00a0opens with a kind of joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to the Garden of Eden,\u201d he sings on \u201cG.O.D. and the Broken Ribs.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s nobody here but me and you\/ So what we gonna be eating?\u201d Most listeners will be waiting for the apple to load, but White answers his own question immediately with a rhyme: \u201cMicrophone check, one-two, one-two.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get Jack White Tickets Here<\/a><\/p>\n

In this telling it is music that is the great Tempter, the end of paradise and the beginning of history. From this moment forward on Frozen Charlotte the guitar will take centerstage, with White and his vocal melodies, if not reduced to backup singer, then at least diminished in importance.<\/p>\n

White continues the bit: \u201cLooks like we got a little place to do the things we need to do now, and it\u2019ll sound like this.\u201d Cue what is less a solo than a wordless monologue of a universe being built. The next guitar monologue comes from Eve finding out she is not meant to be Adam\u2019s sister, after White howls, \u201cThey\u2019re gonna make you a mother.\u201d This is met with the blues guitar equivalent of Kevin Hart screaming \u201cWHAT?\u201d followed by an at-times painful resolution. Motherhood is not for the weak.<\/p>\n

Related Video<\/p>\n

So it goes. On \u201cDerecho Demonico\u201d White says, \u201cYou\u2019ll have to try to twist my arm,\u201d and then the guitar starts to howl. For \u201cThere\u2019s Nobody There\u201d it\u2019s the instrument that follows through on White\u2019s promise to throw up flares and smoke. The violent struggle of anti-capitalist \u201cDollar Bill\u201d is fought with axe in hand.<\/p>\n

The aesthetic won\u2019t be a surprise to anyone familiar with White\u2019s discography, but the emphasis is a little different. Gone are dense political diatribes like \u201cIcky Thump\u201d or \u201cArchbishop Harold Holmes\u201d \u2014 \u201cDollar Bill\u201d is almost a nursery rhyme with just 32 unique words. Instead, White is more prone to echo a phrase than in any period except perhaps the earliest of The White Stripes. The Frozen Charlotte\u00a0tracks \u201cThere\u2019s Nobody There\u201d and \u201cThick as Thieves\u201d are more than half repetitions. Despite some varied verses, the clear takeaway from \u201cShe\u2019s in a Frenzy\u201d is the refrain, \u201cShe\u2019s in a frenzy\/ A frenzy\/ She\u2019s in a frenzy\/ A frenzy!\u201d Aside from the deliciously wordy opener, few of these cuts have the lyrical density to fill another poetry book.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all right, White\u2019s guitar can do the talking, and on\u00a0Frozen Charlotte\u00a0it keeps showing off a sly sense of humor. \u201cYou\u2019ll Never Fix Me\u201d has hair metal flourishes that a) rip and b) tell us not to feel too bad for the protagonist. There\u2019s none of the pain of childbirth that Eve felt earlier on \u201cG.O.D. and the Broken Ribs,\u201d and instead a descending four-then-five note riff hits like, oh I don\u2019t know, wind from a fast car whipping through a thick plume of chest hair, or a Tarantino murder scene built around brutal slapstick. There\u2019s a hint of irony, sure, but more than that, White sounds dead set on having fun.<\/p>\n

This comes through in songs that seem written for the live show. The muscular breakdown in \u201cRaising the Grain,\u201d complete with a repeated refrain of \u201cHey! Hey!\u201d, will hit hard as hell at a club near you. \u201cI Can\u2019t Believe What I\u2019m Hearing\u201d makes good on its title with several distinct movements, connected by little more than the BPM and a two-note groove as irresistible and goofy as Will Ferrell on cowbell. Is it ha-ha funny? Not at all, but wryness comes through nonetheless. The same way that \u201cSeven Nation Army\u201d lends itself to a unified march, Frozen Charlotte is made for a shit-eating grin.<\/p>\n

White is no longer the young rocker obsessed with myth \u2014 who once pulled a reverse Adam and Eve, and turned a wife into a kind of sister. It takes real effort to maintain mystery; dropping it might be a relief. These days he knows he doesn\u2019t need the origin stories or color-coordinated outfits to hold our attention; he\u2019s in Saturday Night Live\u2018s five-timer club, for crying out loud. He sounds unruffled; in his lane; chilling.<\/p>\n

Frozen Charlotte\u00a0is named for a rigid porcelain doll, itself christened after a girl in a folk song who refused to wear a coat over her pretty gown and froze to death on her way to the ball. White drops the name in \u201cG.O.D. and the Broken Ribs\u201d in his role as an antiquarian, comparing himself to something old and cheap that relied on imagination. But it proves to be a fitting metaphor for the kind of album White set out to make.<\/p>\n

A Frozen Charlotte doll cost as little as one penny, and while she couldn\u2019t do the splits like Barbie, similar models brought joy to poorer homes across Victorian England and early America. Something cheap that unlocks the imagination has always been White\u2019s idea of a good time, as well as his conception of the guitar itself.<\/p>\n

Like a doll, a guitar is a collection of lifeless parts that, in the right hands, can become a whole world. More than most of the albums in his Rock Hall career, White\u2019s Frozen Charlotte\u00a0is a love letter to his favorite instrument, play time with a friend. And despite \u2014 or perhaps because of \u2014 this shift in emphasis away from lyrics and towards guitar, it has never been easier to see the real man inside the icon.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Frozen Charlotte\u00a0Artwork:<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

Frozen Charlotte\u00a0Tracklist:
01. G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs
02. Derecho Demonico
03. There\u2019s Nobody There
04. Raising the Grain
05. You\u2019ll Never Fix Me
06. Nobody Knows
07. Dollar Bill
08. I Can\u2019t Believe What I\u2019m Hearing
09. Thick as Thieves
10. All Alone Again
11. She\u2019s in a Frenzy
12. Making Contact
13. Neighbors Blues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack White\u2018s new album\u00a0Frozen Charlotte\u00a0opens with a kind of joke. \u201cWelcome to the Garden of Eden,\u201d he sings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-749043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}