Lazaretto
Jack White
Jack White’s second solo album is steeped in tones of his adopted hometown, Nashville. Lighthearted piano, sprightly fiddle and soulful slide guitar lend a country twang to most of the 11 tracks.
White is more open musically on Lazaretto than any of his previous works, whether with the White Stripes, Raconteurs, Dead Weather or solo. He shares the spotlight with fiddler-singer Lillie Mae Rische and Ruby Amanfu, who belongs to the Peacocks, the band that backed White while touring for 2012’s Blunderbuss.
The Dead Weather-esque title single heralds the new album perfectly: a blend of White’s signature guitar-heavy blues rock seasoned with some folksy charm in the form of a violin solo.
Where Blunderbuss explored love and loss, Lazaretto is more about love and loneliness. Parlor piano opens an ode to solitary life, Alone in My Home. A country fiddle cries at the beginning of Temporary Ground, about life’s fleeting nature.
White does the crying and lets his distorted guitar do the talking on High Ball Stepper. Harmonica, organ and piano join in on another rocker, the boastful romp Three Women — the album’s only track White didn’t write alone; he shares credit with late blues guitarist Blind Willie McTell.
At 38, firmly rooted in rock’s lexicon and surrounded by Nashville’s rich musical history, White stretches out on Lazaretto and leaves his future wide open.
— Sandy Cohen
Associated Press
Top Secret Twenty-One
Janet Evanovich
Janet Evanovich delivers another hilarious entry in her Stephanie Plum series with Top Secret Twenty-One.
Life is never dull for bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. Her boyfriend, hot cop Joe Morelli, wants to take their relationship to the next level. She lusts for Ranger, the owner of a security firm that she occasionally assists in cases. Her day job as a bond enforcement agent pays the bills, and she has a partner in Lula, who wears clothes way too small for her and hasn’t met a doughnut she doesn’t like.
When a simple task of bringing in a car dealer named Jimmy Poletti who sold more than cars goes awry, things begin to fall apart for Stephanie and everyone she knows. People who worked with Poletti start to turn up dead. His accountant, a jerk named Briggs, begs Stephanie to protect him.
She reluctantly agrees, but wherever she tries to hide him, trouble follows. Then someone tries to kill Ranger and his team using a crude radioactive device. Can Stephanie stop the explosions and murder to keep her loved ones safe from a ruthless killer? More important, what items can Stephanie’s grandmother remove from her bucket list?
Evanovich’s books featuring Plum and her quirky friends, colleagues and criminals are the perfect junk food for readers wanting a beach read escape, with their combination of biting dialogue, outrageous characters and intense story lines.
— Jeff Ayers
Associated Press
Band of Brothers
Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson has written a song — sometimes two, three or four — for every occasion, mood and moment.
Nelson returns in all his wonderful guises on the first album of mostly new material he penned himself since 1996’s Spirit. Nelson wrote nine of the 14 songs on Band of Brothers with album producer Buddy Cannon, and each song is a perfect projection of its writer’s best qualities. They’re comfortable, familiar, well-worn, but also new and different.
Nelson is 81 now, and the new songs make allowances for this. His defiant moments sound a little more world-weary, his regrets a bit more painful. But his sense of humor and philosopher’s personality remain undiminished.
Band of Brothers opens with Defiant Willie staring down the storm on Bring It On. Wistful Willie lets the Guitar in the Corner play him, Repentant Willie hits The Wall and Randy Willie leads us through a tall tale of all his Wives and Girlfriends, “but may they never meet/may they never know each other when they pass on the street.”
Populist Willie provides the title track, a beautiful display of the sentiment that has made Nelson incongruously both an outlaw and a beloved figure. “We’re a band of brothers and sisters and whatever/On a mission to break all the rules.”
Nelson positions that song between a pair of Billy Joe Shaver covers — The Git Go, featuring Jamey Johnson, and It’s Hard to Be an Outlaw — and this outlaw triptych serves as a powerful reminder of why we’ve loved Nelson all these years.
— Chris Talbott
Associated Press