Review: Jack White blows ‘em away once again in first of two St. Paul ‘No Name’ shows

Oops, he did it again. Destroyed the place.

After putting on one of the most electrifying and maniacally rocking performances in recent history at First Avenue last fall, Jack White returned to the Twin Cities on Monday to settle any doubts about that previous show. Was it maybe just a fluke? Were the rave reports possibly inflated by the fact that it was such a hard-to-get ticket in a venue much smaller than his usual locations?

Nope. The former White Stripes frontman put on just as intense, inspired, intoxicating and at times insane performance Monday night at the Palace Theatre. He’ll probably do it again Tuesday night, too.

Still on the small end of White’s venue scale — he sold out the thrice-bigger Armory his three previous times in town — the First Ave-run Palace landed a two-nighter from the newly eligible Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominee just seven months after his last local gig.

There’s probably an easy explanation for why, one that must have been obvious to all of Monday night’s 2,500 attendees: He’s having a ton of fun with his current band and their minimalistic, bombastic approach.

It took all of five seconds for the Detroit rocker, 49, and his three-man ensemble to burst into a noisy intro interlude after hustling onto the Palace stage Monday. They didn’t waste another second for the next 85 minutes.

That opening blast gave way to “Old Scratch Blues” and “That’s How I’m Feeling,” two of the hardest-cranking songs from White’s latest and best solo album, “No Name.” It’s hard to remember the last time two new songs by a veteran artist generated this much excitement and mayhem in the audience.

Without any stopping or tuning or adjusting his tight leather jacket, White then launched straight into the first of eight White Stripes songs in Monday’s set list — starting with the hard-stomping 2007 oddity “Icky Thump,” whose title was co-opted into political T-shirts worn by a few fans at Monday’s show (changed to “Icky Trump”).

White and his band slowed things down after that, but they didn’t let up. Working without a set list, they hit a patch of deep blues tunes with the Robert Johnson cover “Me and the Devil Blues” and another new tune, “It’s Rough on the Rats (If You’re Asking),” both spotlighting the frontman’s spine-tapping slide guitar abilities.

A few songs later, White could be seen yelling a song title into the ear of bassist Dominic Davis, whose job it was to kick off “Why Walk a Dog?” The moment exemplified the impromptu attack plan fueling these shows. White and Co. veered into a more fuzzed-out, psychedelic montage that included “That Black Bat Licorice” and found keyboardist Bobby Emmett at his most Deep Purply.

Even those trippy-dippy tunes, though, felt as heavy and fervent as the more fast and furious stuff. So did the drawn-out epic “Broken Boy Soldier” by one of White’s side bands, the Raconteurs, whose drummer Patrick Keeler tightly steers this current lineup and keeps it from going off course — which it threatened to do late in the set with a mash-up of a Soledad Brothers song, “Goin’ Back to Memphis,” with a snippet of Mazzy Star’s “Ghost Highway.”

“Me and the band have been here a minute,” White said during his only spoken exchange with the crowd, showing love for the smaller Twin City. “We went to the ol’ Mickey’s Diner and ate at Mancini’s.”

The proud Midwesterner knows his way around St. Paul, and he knew where he was headed with Monday’s thrilling encore, too. Two more blistering new songs, “Archbishop Harold Holmes” and “Underground,” gave way to two full-blast White Stripes songs, including the sing-along finale “Seven Nation Army.”

Whether or not White and the band play that megahit again or more White Stripes standards at Tuesday’s gig is uncertain; which is a big part of what’s so great about this thankfully extended tour. Even more impressive is how much playing the hits seems irrelevant to how well the shows go.