Jack White has announced the upcoming release of two new albums next year —his first new full-length collections in over four years. “Fear of the Dawn” will arrive on April 8 and “Entering Heaven Alive” will follow on July 22.
White has also unveiled the video for his latest song “Taking Me Back,” which you can see below.
Further details on the albums — apart from vinyl-release information, which isn’t surprising from White, a notorious vinyl obsessive — were scant, although the titles and cover artwork are certainly glooming and reflect a theme of mortality.
In addition to the standard black vinyl version of “Fear of the Dawn,” five limited edition vinyl variants have been announced and are available for pre-order today. The variants include a midnight blue vinyl version with a screen printed jacket available to Third Man Records Vault Members in the Vault Novelties store, astronomical blue vinyl at select independent record stores, moon glow white vinyl at Target, and a split moon glow white & astronomical blue LP with an 11”x11” screen printed poster and Third Man Records compilation CD at Rough Trade Records. An exclusive slip mat is also available with the album only at Urban Outfitters. Details on digital pre-orders for both albums and vinyl variants for “Entering Heaven Alive” will be announced at a later date.
Today’s announcement is joined by the premiere of the official music video for “Taking Me Back,” directed by Jack White III and co-directed by Lauren Dunn (Megan Thee Stallion, Kali Uchis). Watch the video for the song below.
Ever since White’s explosive appearance on “Saturday Night Live” last year, fans have thirsted for a return to his stripped-down sound of his early career.“Taking Me Back,” White’s first new solo music in nearly four years, combines that stripped down rock sound with the skronking guitar effects of the more experimental last album, “Boarding House Reach.”
On White’s electrifying “SNL appearance, he led with a medley, which included some lyrics rewritten for the quarantine era. Although they might have sounded written for the occasion, the rocker was actually covering Blind Willie Johnson’s 1920s song “Jesus Is Coming Soon,” written with numerous references to the 1918 pandemic, sandwiched between an opening snippet of his Beyonce/”Lemonade” collaboration “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and the White Stripes’ “Ball and Biscuit.”
“Great disease was mighty and people were sick everywhere / It was an epidemic and it traveled though the air,” White sang, borrowing from the bluesman Johnson in his first appearance. He reiterated vintage Blind Willie lines about public schools closing as a result of the Spanish flu. But “Just tell everybody in the place to get out and we’ll be clean together” — that’s from the 2003 “Ball and Biscuit,” with some new meaning in the quarantine age.
He also played a short set with the band outside the new Third Man Record store in London earlier this fall.
