Boarding House Reach

On Boarding House Reach, he goes well out of his way to re-scatter the puzzle, but it’s a divine enough mess.

The misfires are few and far between. Boarding House Reach may be a hard pill to swallow, but it's rarely boring and without a doubt the most far-reaching, experimental collection of songs in White's ample discography.

White does pretty much everything except what fans have learned to expect from him. It’s an ambitious, dizzying, and sometimes challenging listen, but overall makes for one of the most maniacally creative albums of the year.

Boarding House Reach is easily one of the most layered and compelling releases of 2018, which furthers White’s legacy as one of the few remaining mavericks in music.

In many ways, this is as radical, experimental and mind-expanding of a pop album as you’re likely to hear anytime soon, let alone by a festival headlining artist.

It’s esoteric and unsettling, because he’s done trying to reason with us.

There is ultimately something sketchy about Boarding House Reach, pulling in so many directions that it suggests rough drafts for more fully formed work to come. But for all that, there are so many rich ingredients in the mix, even misophones should find something to soothe their troubled ears.

It’s weird and brilliant, and anything but regressive.

In Boarding House Reach White gives himself a free hand, and the result is a more experimental and surprising work.

There's nothing here likely to be adopted as a stadium chant, but in its tethered imagination, Boarding House Reach is the most surprising and eccentric record White's made. [May 2018, p.110]

What is by some distance the weirdest, wildest White we've yet encountered on record. [No. 150, p.60]

White’s reverence for classic music of the past is still a big part of who is he here; he’s just shifting focus with a more manic and multi-faceted approach. That’s not weird. That’s smart.

Boarding House Reach holds together as a complete piece. The songs complement each other, speaking to the restlessness and reluctance of an artist who’s spent the last decade or so successfully transforming himself into a brand.

His latest is his first true departure, and the unfamiliarity is at once a challenge to absorb and also a fascinating turnabout from an artist who is demonstrating that he is more willing--and able--than most to subvert the expectations he’s created for himself.

"Corporation" and "Ice Station Zebra," the two funkiest numbers here, illustrate this with their precise grooves, but even the self-consciously weird interludes show this same level of exactitude. While that keeps Boarding House Reach somewhat in a straitjacket, it also makes it a fascinating listen, because it's a document of a control freak anxious to get loose.

Mostly White sounds like a scrappy, abstract-leaning '80s-style battle rhymer who probably didn't win a lot of battles. Elsewhere, experimental detours dead-end: "Everything You've Ever Learned" feels like aimless twaddle with newly-unboxed digital toys. But at its best, the spirit of freaky free-play is thrilling and refreshing, a worthy end unto itself.

Even when an experiment fails, it does so in intriguing and unpredictable ways.