Album: Jack White, Blunderbuss (XL Recordings)

You don’t, one would assume, pull theplug on one of the most successful rock acts of the 21st century without good reason. Jack White’s side projects and post-White Stripes collaborations have, so far, been variable in quality. He must therefore, surely, have been holding back the real fireworks for the first album under his own name?

In the same way that the theory that Noel Gallagher would be a daring musical futurist were it not for the trad-rock framework of Oasis turned out to be laughable, so it proves with White. Whether in the Stripes or out, Jack is forever manacled to his determinedly vintage way of going about things.

Blunderbuss does, at times, approach his finest work. But it doesn't do anything he hasn't already done.