"Love Interruption," the first single from Jack White's forthcoming album, was a fine slice of Lee Hazlewood-flavored country soul. But this, friends, is the shit. From the second that opening power chord punches into your skull like Javier Bardem's bolt gun from No Country for Old Men, it's on: Jack White, solo artist, spitting out tweaked, tortured metal-esque garage rock just like he did in the old days. If there are acoustic string instruments here, as there were on his recent Saturday Night Live performance of the song, they are barely in evidence. What you get is a firestorm of electric-guitar noise cloaked in Hammond-organ smoke, with a crushing groove that never gets too busy. Meg White isn't here, but her spirit lingers.

Listen to "Sixteen Saltines":
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• Photos: Random Notes

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."