One day last month, customers at Jack White’s Third Man Record shops in London, Nashville and Detroit received a free gift with their purchases – a white-label vinyl album with a generic white sleeve, titled “no name”. The record was not the work of the Chicago rapper, but rather a surprise release from White himself, available only to those lucky shoppers on the day. The Third Man Instagram account instructed owners to “Rip it”, and a number duly distributed it across the internet. (This guerilla release strategy calls to mind Sault releasing five albums of new material as a download in 2022, or Cindy Lee’s acclaimed triple album Diamond Jubilee, which they released this March and is only available as a free download from a Geocities website or as an ad-free YouTube stream.)
Why White chose to let his sixth solo album slip out in such a manner – tracks initially devoid of titles – is anyone’s guess, but the man who’s done more than any other modern artist to revive record-collecting has form for such playfulness. He even went so far as to hide the 100 copies of the second single by side-project the Upholsterers within furniture reupholstered by bandmate Brian Muldoon, with whom White served an upholstery apprenticeship in his youth (only two copies have as yet been discovered). No Name will please both extremes of Jack White fandom: the diehard completists get another super-rare “holy grail” for their Discogs wantlists, while the fans who simply dig the music get 13 new songs they don’t even need to subscribe to streaming services to hear.
