Simplicity was a boon for Jack White on No Name, his high-octane, charmingly back-to-basics new album. The same went for his concert last night at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre, which for a little more than an hour and a half energetically surveyed the singer-songwriter’s expansive career with just three other close-quartered musicians on a stage so thoroughly unembellished with requisite big-name-act visuals or branding that even the front of the kick drum, which regularly is the place where a bells and whistles-averse artist might still stamp their name, had its original Ludwig bearing. Sometimes sliced through with beams of white and orange, a haze of blue lights was enough.

“Working on these songs last year,” White said of No Name in a 2024 interview with Consequence of Sound, “I just wanted the album to be dust on the cover, and for it to not have a name.” Consistently trumpeted as one of the former White Stripes member’s best solo projects (if not his best), you can hear on No Name how creating with a sense of self-imposed anonymity loosened up the notoriously detail-obsessive White. It’s his first album since 2014’s Lazaretto, which has been trailed by decent but perhaps too-fussed-over LPs, to so strongly suggest an artist having fun. He let listeners gradually discover that on their own. He spurned a traditional press cycle, where he might clarify his inspirations and intentions pre-drop, for a surprise release, where customers of his Third Man Records brick-and-mortar locations were discreetly slipped copies of the unmarked LP along with their purchases before the rest of the public could listen.

This review was originally published on 425 on May 20; read the rest here.