Review: Jack White’s return to First Avenue is one for the history books

Seven decades in, rock ‘n’ roll isn’t full of many surprises anymore. So what a delight to witness 1,500 very lucky fans being hit over the head with the element of surprise Wednesday night at First Avenue.

In a show that should go down as one of the most thrilling nights in the legendary rock club’s 54-year history, Jack White arrived at the club where “Purple Rain” was filmed using a few tricks out of Prince’s playbook. He announced the gig on short notice (just two days). He made it extra hard for anyone but fans to get tickets. And then he made his band work extra hard and follow his every move once they took the stage.

The concert itself shouldn’t have come as all that big of a surprise. White, 49, has already played about 20 pop-up gigs like this one at beloved venues around America and Europe since August, when his newest album, “No Name,” arrived with no notice. Of course he would play the historic Minneapolis bus-depot-turned-rock-haven where his old band the White Stripes played in 2002, just as they were breaking big.

First Ave was actually one of the biggest venues on this sporadic tour. White seemed to highlight that at show’s end, when he joked, “It’s so great to play in this giant stadium tonight.”

Wednesday’s concert site was still smaller than all the Minnesota venues he has played in the past half-decade. Dozens of fans were loitering outside with their “I need 1″ finger up. This was one show where the strict ticketing rules meant you couldn’t pay $500 to Stubhub to get in. (Um … why can’t more shows be like this?)

It would’ve been worth $500, though. White once again set a gold standard for live rock ‘n’ roll performances.

The Detroit singer/guitarist played the whole 100-minute set loose and spontaneous and with unwavering intensity. He almost never stopped between songs. At one point, he was even toweling off his brow with one hand while picking out notes on his guitar neck with the other to keep the momentum going.

The only time White stopped playing was every few songs to change from one ultra-rare edition guitar to another — including some kind of large, vintage, hollow-body six-string instrument on which his slide-guitar technique sounded piercing and wicked enough to peel the black paint off the club’s walls.

He sprung the element of surprise on his three bandmates, too, who included drummer Patrick Keeler from White’s side band the Raconteurs and keyboardist Bobby Emmett from Sturgill Simpson’s camp.

There was no set list anywhere on stage. White would just hastily cut from a fuzzy, chaotic end of one song into a fast, clean start of another song, and his band would climb aboard. The set list in the end was in a wildly different order than in other cities with a few surprise entries, too — as has been the case in all cities.

He stacked the early part of the set with songs off the new album, starting with the LP’s guttural opening track, “Old Scratch Blues.” That bled straight into the more buoyant single “That’s How I’m Feeling,” which soon gave way to one of the night’s most manic and monstrous — albeit quirkiest — highlights, “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking),” a showpiece for his slide-guitar skills.

Not even three months old yet, all three of those songs were received by the crowd like permanent/classic set-list fodder for decades to come. But White went on to offer plenty of staples from previous decades, too.

The early deep cut “Little Bird” — stretched into a roller-coaster-y jam — was the first White Stripes tune to arrive. The next one came mid-show after a truly bluesy, hallowed-sounding cover of Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain” played on acoustic guitar. With an acoustic already in hand, White went ahead and launched into the Stripes’ “Hotel Yorba,” prompting an excited sing/shout-along from the elbow-packed crowd.

Things got really heavy in the second half. A Black Sabbath kind of heavy. White and the band thundered their way through the Raconteurs’ epic “Broken Boy Soldier” and a metallic version of his 2022 solo cut “Fear of the Dawn” before launching into the White Stripes’ tank-rolling sports-arena anthem “Seven Nation Army” for an exuberant pre-encore finale.

More old Stripes favorites came in the encore: “Fell in Love With a Girl” and the night’s closing stomper “Ball and Biscuit.” Sandwiched in between them was one more track off the new album — the best one, actually — a crunchy and tempestuous, sermon-like howler called “Archbishop Harold Holmes,” which is about a holy man or a murder or both.

That last of those new songs underlined what might be the biggest surprise of the night: More than a quarter-century into his career, White is still churning out some of his most electrifying and evocative material yet. It really seems like there’s no slowing down this Motor City madman.