For more than a decade, you could be forgiven for thinking that Jack White – rock and roll’s last great aesthetic purist – had diverged from his righteous path, if not lost his way entirely. Once an unbridled force of nature, his music had become so self-conscious and studied that, if nothing else, you had to give it to him for trying so damn hard.
You could sense trouble as early as the last two White Stripes records, as the band began to buckle under the burden of their self-imposed limitations. Other aesthetic purists before them (the Ramones, AC/DC, Motörhead) have all faced this problem too, as the conceptual perfection of the original vision was diluted, fell into decay or simply grew dull.
