Product Description
Brand New ~ Sealed! Pressed On 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl, The ‘Lazaretto’ ULTRA LP From Jack White Has Many Amazing Features, Including Ability To Run At Three Speeds, Tracks Hidden Under The Label, & “Dual-Groove Technology”, Which Creates Alternate Versions Of The Album, Depending On Where You Drop The Needle!
‘Lazaretto’ inhabits an exciting place in White’s expansive discography as the follow-up to 2012’s ‘Blunderbuss’.
Over the past five years, Jack White & Third Man Records have brought to life many ideas that were new to the century-old vinyl format. Continuing that grand tradition, the Lazaretto ULTRA LP contains many incredible bold innovations:
Tracks A1 to A5 and BA1/BB1 to B6 are listed continuously from 1 to 11 and play at 33 ⅓ RPM.
Tracks A6 and B7 are locked grooves featuring elements from their respective previous tracks.
Tracks A7 and B8 are untitled, hidden tracks printed on each side’s labels, and play at 78 RPM and 45 RPM respectively, thus making the LP a three speed record.
Side A’s groove is inverted and plays from the inside out.
“Just One Drink” consists of two different intros, each in its own groove, with both connecting at the body of the song. BA1 is acoustic, BB1 is electric.
Side B has a matte finish, giving the appearance of an un-played 78 RPM record.
Vinyl is pressed in flat-edged format.
Dead wax area on Side A contains a hand-etched hologram by Tristan Duke of Infinity Light Science, the first of its kind on a vinyl record.
Tracks B3 and B4 are swapped in comparison to the digital editions, and B2 features a slightly longer intro.
The vinyl was mastered entirely from analog sources with no additional compression used.
Side 1:
A1: Three Women
A2: Lazaretto
A3: Temporary Ground
A4: Would You Fight For My Love?
A5: High Ball Stepper
A6: Untitled
A7: Untitled II
Side 2:
BA1: Just One Drink
BB1: Just One Drink II
B2: Alone In My Home
B3: That Black Bat Licorice
B4: Entitlement
B5: I Think I Found The Culprit
B6: Want And Able
B7: Untitled III
B8: Untitled IV
AMG –
It simultaneously holds every side of White, existing at the crossroads where modernity, tradition, hard work, and inspiration all meet. Like "blunderbuss," a "lazaretto" is an ancient reference that means little in the modern world, a fact that does not escape Jack White, a musician who specializes in blurring lines between past and present. Contrary to his carefully cultivated persona as a raider of lost Americana, White never, ever was a purist: he thrived upon seizing the precise moment when accepted definitions lose all meanings and turn into something new. This tension surfaces on Lazaretto, his second solo album, a record that lives upon the edges of his interests. There is a fair share of blues bluster -- via Zeppelin riffs and huffed references to digital cameras, the opener "Three Women" modernizes Blind Willie McTell, while he twists a refrain from Howlin' Wolf's "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" on "Just One Drink" -- but Lillie Mae Rische's violin occupies nearly as much space as his own howling guitars, pushing White into the left field where he prefers to reside. That eccentricity is the pleasure of Lazaretto, which is by every measure the strangest record associated with White since 2005's Get Behind Me Satan, a record that found Jack tackling the aftermath of fame by turning gothic. He's since lightened his outlook -- all the restored recording booths and trickster vinyl coming out of Third Man Records in Nashville show the heart of a prankster -- but he retains the itch of an artist, thriving upon self-imposed limitations. With Lazaretto, that amounted to adapting a clutch of fiction he wrote when he was 19, using the themes of these stories and plays to not only fuel the topics, but to freshen his songwriting, which was veering ever so slightly toward craftsmanship on Blunderbuss. Here, White kicks the legs out from under himself, allowing himself some signature indulgences -- the aforementioned blues blazers, plus the unhinged "That Black Bat Licorice" -- and reviving a few forgotten sounds (the closing piano ballad "Want and Able" recalls the moody turns of Satan), but generally he pounces upon detours, savoring the instrumental of "High Ball Stepper," demonstrating a facility with hip-hop rhythms and cadence on "Lazaretto," and lingering in dark corners for perhaps a little longer than necessary. All this sound and fury disguises how elsewhere on Lazaretto there are songs as exquisitely sculpted as those on Blunderbuss -- the heartbroken honky tonk of "Temporary Ground," the deceptively sprightly "Alone in My Home," the teasing melodrama of "Would You Fight for My Love?" -- but what makes it a better, richer work is how it simultaneously holds every side of White, existing at the crossroads where modernity, tradition, hard work, and inspiration all meet.