Wild haired and bug eyed, like a Johnny Depp character in a Tim Burton movie, Jack White brought a raft of expectations in the show under his own name at the Omaha Music Hall Monday.
He came largely from bands: the White Stripes, then the Raconteurs, and now the aggregations that alternately back his solo work “Blunderbuss,” one male, one female, switching nightly.
Fresh from a performance that closed out Chicago’s Lollapalooza Sunday (which featured both outfits), White played solely with the men Monday, Los Buzzardos, similarly dressed for business in ties vests and suit, White was as hard hitting as imaginable, bringing in hits from his other bands but suggesting overall a band that influenced the whole thing: Led Zeppelin.
An ambitious goal, certainly, but the aggressive guitar playing, which would also alternate into gentle acoustic picking, paired with White’s screaming vocals that had their own dynamics (loud, silence, soft, loud), a drummer who hit so hard he stood at the impact, other musicians who brought a similarly all-out thrash to their attack and a soundman who turned it all up to 11, it was a dizzying reincarnation of that beloved metal band.
A lot of White’s songs, too, copy that heavy metal construction of heavy riffs, stratospheric solos and wild yelps, while leaving room inside for a lot of improvisation.
For a show of this type, White left open the possibilities, assembling the band in a semi-circle around him (the drums, the instrument so prominent in White Stripes to his immediate right). He’d nod and they’d take solos; something he’d do with the audience as well, who with a nod or the smallest encouraging gesture, sing a verse or clap along.
He started with the White Stripes’ “Hello Operator” before moving into “Missing Pieces” and “Trash Tongue Talker.”
Seemingly freed of a set list, he’d whisper something in the lingering feedback between songs and begin bashing into something else, except when he chose to provide a palate-cleanser of an acoustic singalong, from a welcome midset “We Are Going to be Friends” to a show-closing Lead Belly standard, “Goodnight Irene.”
He only spoke a couple of times, speaking of his first Nebraska visit but second performance, of the sculptures in nearby buildings that seem to be running into walls. But he seemed happy with the crowd and what they achieved with the possibilities before them, together. And he was sure to put in such crowd pleasers as “Steady as She Goes” “Seven Nation Army” both in the encore and in the main set, and one from Dead Weather, “I Cut Like a Buffalo,” maybe dedicated to that buffalo sculpture running into that building.