Jack White didn't just release a surprise album — he made a stand for rock mystique

Leave it to Jack White to score another victory for vinyl records — but even more important, for the magic of absorbing new music with mystique intact.

In an unannounced move, White’s latest album landed Friday, but only for unknowing customers who happened to be shopping at his Third Man Records stores in Detroit, Nashville and London. There, unobtrusively slipped into checkout bags with any purchase, was a plain-sleeved record package containing a 12-inch labeled simply “No Name.”

There were minimal clues on the first eyeballing of this white vinyl platter that resembled a test pressing. No artist, no title. Side A of the mystery record clearly featured seven tracks, with six on the flip side. If you scrutinized more closely, you could spot the inscriptions “Heaven and Hell” and “Black and Blue” etched into the run-out grooves. That was it.

All very cryptic … until you got yourself to a turntable, dropped the needle and heard the familiar singing voice of White, the Detroit-born rocker who has long championed the value of vinyl.

On a Friday when a devastating technological snafu brought computers around the globe to their knees, White smacked a homer with an old-fashioned analog swing.

We got our copy of “No Name” during a midafternoon visit to Third Man’s Cass Corridor shop in Detroit, and we’re not going to purport to offer an authoritative review from a few quick listens following a long day at the Concert of Colors festival happening nearby. There will be plenty of time to absorb the music this weekend.

But the album is raw and spare, dominated by guitars and drums — ripe for some White Stripes allusions — with the occasional organ and vocal effect the most to stray outside those lines.

There are bits of spiky punk, riff-stamped slabs of rock, a song driven by bluesy slide guitar blossoming into a colorful crescendo, a nod to ’70s glam with divebombing guitars. The last track on Side A features the only real elaborate production effort; the album closer is a dense and simmering drone.

Aside from White, immediately identifiable from his voice and guitar tones, we don’t know who else is featured here, although the count-in that launches Side B certainly sounds like White’s longtime touring drummer, Daru Jones.

Third Man officials were silent about the nature and context of Friday’s release. It’s not clear if the album will get a formal release or even a real title. No track listing has been revealed.

Whatever it is, we’re safe to call it White’s first new record since “Entering Heaven Alive,” which was released two years ago this weekend as part of a two-album salvo that included “Fear of the Dawn” that spring of 2022.

The digital world did play its role Friday: Online, word of the new White album began to circulate organically via Third Man shoppers who’d wound up with a copy of the mystery record. By late afternoon, it had turned into a full-fledged viral moment as record recipients figured out what was up and enthusiastically exchanged info about their lucky get. Music magazines aggregated those social media posts to hop on the buzz.

A segment on Detroit’s WDET-FM, where on-air personality Ryan Patrick Hooper played five of the album’s tracks in a real-time spin of his just-acquired record, quickly took on holy-grail status globally for White fans, who shared a link to the online archive of the public-radio program.

But ultimately, the Internet was a sideshow to the real magic of White’s Friday gambit.

The quiet album rollout wasn’t just a clever, headline-grabbing gimmick. It was a throwback to the days when mystique meant something as a music lover.

Heading to a turntable Friday with little information but tantalizing possibilities offered a pure and spontaneous experience harking back to a bygone era, before ubiquitous digital streaming and carefully calibrated marketing plans commodified the act. This was 1975 with a new Led Zeppelin LP in hand — but in this case minus even an album cover or liner notes to be pored over for meager tidbits of insight into the musical journey set to unfold.

Less-is-more has been White’s approach since his days with the White Stripes a quarter-century ago. Like other clued-in artists before him — from Oscar Wilde to Quentin Tarantino — he has long recognized that art is best created when boundaries and limitations are in place.

Perhaps we’ll learn more about Jack White’s new album in coming days and weeks. Those revelatory nuggets were once part of the enchantment, too. For now, we’ll happily take “No Name” just as it is: a new music offering with a healthy side of intrigue.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jack White's secret, surprise new album is a victory for mystique