JACK’S BACK

There’s nothing tongue-in-cheek or swaggeringly avant-garde about Jack White’s new single, “Connected by Love.” The song—the lead single from Boarding House Reach (Third Man/Columbia), White’s upcoming third solo album following 2014’s Lazaretto—comes across as a heartfelt, humanistic anthem inspired by these divisive times. In the uplifting lyric, White finds a through line between universal inclusiveness and personal intimacy, underscored by the Pasqual Gutierrez-directed video.

A low-frequency oscillating synth forms the bed of the arrangement, over which a Hammond B-3 churns, joined by a gospel chorale and a brief, blistering guitar solo, setting up the stripped-back, climactic final minute.

Columbia and manager Ian Montone have to be ecstatic about this thrilling, timely piece from one of rock’s latter-day standard bearers.

A second track, the simultaneously released rocker “Respect Commander,” is closer to what we’ve come to expect from this ever-restless, envelope-pushing polymath.