Listen: Jack White returns with ‘High Ball Stepper’

Jack White today revealed the first glimpse of his new album via the instrumental track “High Ball Stepper,” where his bluesy, blistering guitar riffs play give-and-take with assorted manipulated instrumentation. Piano keys are scraped and pounded as if the machine were a washboard, and guitar notes are stretched and bled until they sound like emergency sirens.

Only don’t call “High Ball Stepper” a single.

A proper single, one that Pop & Hiss presumes will have vocals, will be released in the days and weeks to come. The latter will be the title track of White’s forthcoming solo effort, “Lazaretto,” due June 10 via Third Man Records/Columbia.

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“Lazaretto” is the follow-up to White’s 2012 album “Blunderbuss.” which earned an album of the year Grammy nomination. “Blunderbuss,” according to Nielsen SoundScan states published by Billboard, has sold 553,000 copies to date.

A 458-word press release today offers little insight into the music on White’s “Lazaretto,” instead detailing the $60 limited-edition packaging for the album. Essentially a quarterly subscription that includes limited-run vinyl and access to exclusive content, the “Lazaretto” package is available through April 30.

Among the goodies for White die-hards are demos of album tracks “Alone in My Home” and “Entitlement,” both said to be recorded by White while he was in Mexico, as well as a 40-page hardbound book, a letter-pressed postcard and the album on split-color blue-and-white vinyl, described as “an alternate presentation of the album [that] is both insightful and deserving.”

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Oh, there’s also a fold-out poster and a “linen.”

White earlier dropped some hints about the new album to Rolling Stone. “It’s definitely not one sound,” he said. “It’s definitely several. Like you heard in ‘Blunderbuss,’ there’s many different styles there. I don’t pick my style and then write a song. I just write whatever comes out of me, and whatever style it is is what it is, and it becomes something later.”

White is among the headliners of this year’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

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