He's Jack of All Trades

Is there anything Jack White can't do? The White Stripes front-man is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, actor ("Cold Mountain"), pianist, theremin player, marimbist--in fact, he plays just about everything but drums. (That's what Meg White's for.) He's a deconstructionist who can dismantle rock and blues and reassemble them as minimalist, passionate (and remarkably accessible), Grammy-winning songs. It's even possible that his fashion sense inspired Willy Wonka's undertaker-meets-sideshow-barker look in the new version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

White's not nearly finished making the rest of us feel lazy and untalented. Now he's the power behind "Broken Boy Soldiers" (nominally by the Raconteurs), one of the most charismatic pop/rock albums this year. This band is yet another of White's side projects, though he insists the quartet isn't just an outlet for more superfluous energy. The Detroit-bred rocker collaborates with singer-songwriter Brendan Benson--another respected artist from the fringe--the Greenhornes' bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler, both alt-country musicians who played on Loretta Lynn's White-produced "Van Lear Rose."

The album's first single, "Steady as She Goes," already sounds like a classic hit from some alternate universe where go-go beats and new-wave quirkiness dance hand in hand. The rest of the CD is adorned with carefully chosen bits and pieces of effervescent '60s pop, '70s monster rock and impossibly catchy choruses plundered from various decades over the past 40 years. One track mixes Zeppelin-like psychedelia with smarty-pants prog rock. (Sounds awful, but it works.) Another seems like a straight-ahead bluesy lament--until feelin'-groovy vocal harmonies kick in.

The record is heavy on keyboards: from spooky electric organ to space-age synthesizers so weird they defy both description and identification. On the catchy, AM-oriented songs, White's vocals are bubblegum sweet; on the black-light-poster rockers, he turns high-pitched and high-intensity. Benson's singing, on the other hand, is salt-of-the-earth mellow, and the two singers harmonize beautifully. The lyrics range from random ("This ringing in my ears won't stop/I've got a red Japanese teapot/I've got a pen but I lost the top/I have so many things that you haven't got") to capital-P philosophical: "You've got to learn to live, and live to learn." Is it ironic? Hope so. But who cares when it sounds this good?

"Broken Boy Soldiers" is short: only 10 songs, which go by too quickly. That makes it one of the rare albums you can play all the way through without ever having to hit the skip track button. You won't save on any wear and tear, though: you'll be hitting repeat forever.