Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Jack White has taken a leaf out of Willy Wonka’s playbook for his new album. Like Wonka’s golden tickets, No Name made an unheralded arrival last month as an anonymous vinyl gift to shoppers at stores owned by his label Third Man Records. The discs carried no information other than the words “no name”. Recipients were encouraged to post the music online for all to hear.Back in 1999 when White’s former group The White Stripes released their debut album — also when online file-sharing network Napster was launched — such an act would have sent tremors through the record industry. But times have changed. These days recorded music is dominated by streaming, which has vanquished the gorgon of internet piracy. But musicians complain about not seeing the financial benefits.No Name, available now to stream or buy following its official release, is White’s quirky riposte to the lopsided economy of streaming. Riddled with questions about value and worth, its 13 songs turn the clock back to the rough-and-ready style of The White Stripes. The purpose is pointed rather than nostalgic. The album revisits White’s alternative-rock origins at a time when musicians are scrabbling around to find replacements for the dominant model of streaming.Opening track “Old Scratch Blues” finds him enunciating lyrics about profit and loss with lip-smacking intensity. A gnarly blues-rock lick builds into a tumult of guitar solos and drumming. “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking)” has a thickly descending guitar refrain, which underscores his cry that “the world is worse than when we found it”. Distorted guitar solos are multi-tracked like the wailing heads of a Hydra. The Led Zeppelin revivalism of his earlier work is unleashed on several tracks, like in the bluesy psychedelic stomp of “Underground”. Fuzztone pedals are operated frantically, as though at the wheel of a muscle car. “Number One with a Bullet” switches from funk-rock to a heads-down thrash. “Bless Yourself” is brutally loud blues-punk with revving riffs that could have done service on the first White Stripes album. Closing track “Terminal Archenemy Endling” is Zeppelin-style brooder about love. It is bookended by the sound of howling dogs, reacting to a sonic frequency outside human hearing. “It feels like coming home,” White sings, voice trembling like a tuning fork. Music, he wants us to apprehend, has a value that the market cannot hear.★★★★☆‘No Name’ is released by Third Man Records
