Jack White has made no secret of his exasperated feelings about the current state of his country, and the exhaustion of waking up every morning to find out what the president has said or done. His response has been to double down on his own process by signing some of the most passionate and authentic young bands around, and his seventh album Frozen Charlotte is forty two minutes of unapologetic, face-scrunching blues.

Sustained outrage at the current administration will drain your energy and colonise your thoughts, and so Jack White has faced the other way, nurturing bands like Die Spitz, The Belair Lip Bombs and Golomb with care through his fantastic label Third Man Records. Meanwhile, his own personal thesis is that Led Zeppelin perfected the formula, and Frozen Charlotte is in many ways a Led Zeppelin tribute record. This is no bad thing, because the particular thrill of Jack White as a performer has always been watching him embody the roles of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant simultaneously, with incredible guitar playing and an incredible voice both coming out of one person.

Frozen Charlotte sounds lo-fi, with the microphone clipping throughout and an organ that’s earthy and powerful. There’s a moment on opener G.O.D. And The Broken Ribs where the organ holds a raspy chord that sounds as dissonant as a dubstep synth, but produced using technology that has existed since the seventies. There is nothing modern on this record, as it asserts the power of dirty blues and its continued ability to make you scrunch up your face.

The album opens with a cheeky blues number with slapback reverb on the guitar and messy, off-the-rails solos, treating high religious mythology with the irreverence of a great rock and roll performance. The whole record feels live a live jam, with unhinged solos and Jack screaming throughout as the band grooves with each other rather than trying to produce perfect studio cuts. It feels shorter than it is because the songs move quickly and the riffs are so consistently great. By track five You’ll Never Fix Me, with its incredible call and response between the vocal and the guitar, you start to realise that every single one of these tracks is a banger.

Nobody Knows is a lyrical highlight as Jack lists things that scientists and experts absolutely do know, but embodying the character of a politician claiming that it will always be a mystery. Dollar Bill is a joyful slide guitar blues jam with tumbling drum rolls, and Thick As Thieves has the best riffs on the album, catchy as hell and snapping everything into focus. Many of the songs are over and out in under two and a half minutes, and White sounds like he’s not aged a day with his voice carrying no more gravel or crackle than it did in the White Stripes.

Third Man Records represent a deep and abiding belief that the togetherness of a band playing rock and roll comes first. As they get older, most artists drift towards slower, longer and more meandering material, but Jack White has gone in the opposite direction with a punchy, quick and simple record that doesn’t sound overthought.