"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

“I Can See for Miles”

A foreboding accusation of lies and deception, "I Can See for Miles" was given a psychedelic hard-rock veneer by Pete Townshend's whiplash guitar riffs and Keith Moon's thundering drums. The song helped break the Who as stars in the United States, giving them a Top Ten hit in late 1967. "I swoon when I hear the sound," boasted Townshend in Rolling Stone. "The words, which aging senators have called 'drug oriented,' are about a jealous man with exceptionally good eyesight. Honest."