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" Cast half an eye across the music press of the last fortnight and you&amp;#039;ll find a barrage of articles and quotes landing John Anthony Gillis III in hot water. Never knowingly understated, the man we know better as analogue-loving blues innovator Jack White has offended so many people with his forthright views that he was recently pushed to make an all-encompassing apology, casting the net across the full remit of his verbal victims (The Black Keys, Meg White, Lana Del Rey among others) to try and put the whole messy business to bed. It is, naturally, not an ideal situation for White to find himself in, but it&amp;#039;s also not a wholly surprising one. When you have such a blinkered, singular vision, you&amp;#039;re likely to come across a few obstacles in the way. And Lord knows, White&amp;#039;s musical vision has always been the most singular of them all.  Since emerging with The White Stripes in the late &amp;#039;90s, with their strict red, white and black colour palette, mysterious back story and intrinsically old-school recording approach, Jack has never deviated from the idiosyncrasies that have set him up as a true one-off. With each musical project since, there have been strict sonic and aesthetic guidelines put in place to ensure that White&amp;#039;s output stands alone; an instantly recognisable sore thumb in whatever musical landscape it finds itself in; a complete, inimitable package. It&amp;#039;s this attitude that&amp;#039;s both the major strength and slight weakness of Lazaretto - the singer&amp;#039;s second solo LP. On one hand its blues stomps and twanging country romps could never be the work of anyone but White (a good thing), yet there are times when it all feels so familiar it becomes hard to get really, truly excited: Lazaretto is more a solid addition to his canon than a ground-breaking blast from one.      Of course, this is all presuming a relative level of previous acquaintance with White&amp;#039;s work and, were this to be anyone&amp;#039;s introduction, there would still be plenty of cuts to knock you sideways. &amp;#039;Lazaretto&amp;#039; itself is a spiky delight, all verbally dexterous, spat-out couplets, slinking bass line and brilliantly howling guitar solo, while &amp;#039;Just One Drink&amp;#039; is a cheeky, irreverent hoedown that comes on like the divorce papers after old Stripes track &amp;#039;Hotel Yorba&amp;#039;s perky wedlock (&amp;quot;You drink water and I drink gasoline/ One of us is happy/ The other one is mean&amp;quot;). Elsewhere, &amp;#039;That Black Bat Liquorice&amp;#039; is an easy highlight, a dirty blues rock number underpinned by taught riffs and crashing cymbals that grinds around White&amp;#039;s confrontational vocal and warnings from a ghostly female to &amp;quot;behave yourself&amp;quot;. &amp;#039;Temporary Ground&amp;#039; comes from the opposite angle, a simple, porch-side ballad centred around White and co-vocalist Ruby Amanfu and backed by woozy strings and country piano patter, while &amp;#039;Would You Fight for My Love?&amp;#039; is the record&amp;#039;s brooding, emotional apex. Opening theatrically and backed by the kind of operatic flutters that should be soundtracking a stormy break-up in an old black-and-white cinema, White&amp;#039;s tremoring vocal and bruised lyricisms (&amp;quot;The last person in the room she hurt was the person that she loved the most/ Nobody noticed I was down on the rug/ I&amp;#039;m getting better at becoming a ghost&amp;quot;) are a seemingly open window into the mind of a man who&amp;#039;s always enjoyed a relative degree of artifice. Indeed there&amp;#039;s little on Lazaretto that ever falls below par, the only issue is that - after nearly 20 years in the game - Jack White has set his own bar so high, it takes something truly special to smash through it. Lazaretto might not be that record, but it&amp;#039;s still solid enough to keep the rest of the music world on their toes as White continues to peerlessly go about his own sweet business.  Tracks to download: &amp;#039;That Black Bat Liquorice&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;Just One Drink&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;Lazaretto&amp;#039; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/music/album-reviews/review/a575782/jack-white-lazaretto-album-review-a-solid-addition-to-his-canon/>