“Do you believe me yet?” yells Jack White from the lip of the stage, a few songs into his second night’s work at this classy art deco venue in east London. It’s a very Jack White kind of location: highly stylised, lovingly restored, but not entirely removed from its unglamorous surroundings.
Lit in deep blue and strobing white, the colour palette of his solo career, White and his band have played tracks from his most recent album, the surprise-released No Name, first handed out free on white-label vinyl to unsuspecting shoppers at Third Man stores in Nashville, Detroit and London last summer (Third Man Records is White’s own imprint). It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking) is a particularly rousing workout full of guitar shock and awe, from an album that has drawn relieved and delighted comparisons to White’s first band, the White Stripes.
