Photos of Natalie Bergman, Brendan Benson, and Olivia Jean
Even now, nearly 15 years after opening its Nashville headquarters and several hundred releases later, any mention of Third Man Records inevitably conjures two associations. The first is, by default, Jack White. The second is the vinyl revival, a cultural and commercial shift the label helped power and with which it (and he) is now synonymous. That’s not an opinion, it’s numbers. White’s solo albums Blunderbuss and Lazaretto, both issued on the label, were the best-selling vinyl albums of 2012 and 2014, respectively. And it would eventually take seven years and Taylor Swift herself to unseat the latter’s all-time record for first-week vinyl sales.
What qualifies a Third Man release as a “deep cut” is, perhaps, what it doesn’t have, i.e., White’s direct musical involvement. The image of Third Man as the churning core of the Jack White industrial complex and White as its Howard Hawks-ian supreme commander is one the label is keen to resist, both at White’s insistence and through increasingly varied output. “There were a lot of conversations between Jack, Ben [Blackwell], and I about how we get this to a place where every headline is not ‘Jack White’s Third Man Records,’” says Ben Swank, who co-owns the label with White and Blackwell. Those early conversations pushed the label “to start digging more into wider interests,” he says.
There are, of course, running threads through those wider interests and the deep cuts they’ve spawned. Guitar-based music remains Third Man’s raison d’etre, if no longer its entire purview. Much of the label’s depth comes courtesy of one-off 45s and direct-to-tape live recordings made by artists signed elsewhere just passing through. Also evident here is the label’s emphasis on Detroit’s musical history, which Swank considers paramount to Third Man’s very identity. (Nashville’s less so, as it has been handled elsewhere with the same exhaustive attention as, say, film in Los Angeles or opera in Vienna.)
Beyond regional affiliations, the last decade of Third Man’s deep-cut output has revealed a distinct preservational impulse animated by the conviction that certain recordings just “need to exist in the world,” especially ones esoteric enough that “you’re not going to put [them] on all the time.” Some examples: traditional Greek funeral laments and folk songs packaged in R. Crumb-designed covers; an 11-disc collection of Harry Bertoia sound sculptures; and resuscitated recordings of Tennessee gospel choirs and Indian violin music—all united primarily by the simple conviction that this music ought to exist in the world.
Below, Swank takes us into Third Man’s dustier corners and lesser-known avenues, some newer, some not, and all deserving of some time in the sun.
Alexis Zoumbas
A Lament for Epirus 1926–1928 (2019)
Vinyl LP
Third Man’s reissue of Greek violinist Alexis Zoumbas’s beguiling songs of bereavement came about by way of ethnomusicologist Christopher King, whose study and preservation of Epirotic folk songs led the Greek government to grant him honorary citizenship. King brought Zoumbas’s music to Blackwell, and it’s now one of the oldest recordings within the catalog by a long shot. For Swank (and according to the New York Times), the opening track “Epirotica Mirologi” is the showstopper. “That track is utterly heartbreaking to me,” he says. “There’s so much emotion in it that that’s almost all I can focus on besides the musicality of it. But then you listen to what he’s doing, and it’s actually insane what he’s doing on the violin. It’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.”
Magic Roundabout
Up (2021)
Vinyl LP
Pale Saints frontman Ian Masters deserves much of the credit for Up, the no-longer-lost album from no-longer-forgotten Manchester band Magic Roundabout. Masters had planned to remaster and release the tapes himself with help from Third Man engineer Warren Defever, only to end up handing the entire project over to the label. “The Detroit guys freaked out so hard that [Masters] was like, ‘You guys should do it,’” he recalls. For Swank, it’s a “lost treasure” and the kind of “straightforward, no-nonsense music” he’s drawn to: “It’s post-Jesus & Mary Chain and C86-type bands. It’s got that Northern gloom on it. It’s very surprising.”
Various Artists
Southeast of Saturn, Vol. 2 (2022)
2 x Vinyl LP
The pair of Southeast of Saturn compilations are obvious labors of love, documenting Detroit and the greater Midwest’s overlapping dream pop, space rock, and shoegaze scenes throughout the ‘90s. Swank is partial to the second volume due to its inclusion of “Impulse Red” by Xebec, a spacey noise-pop group out of Toledo, Ohio. (The master was apparently saved on a PlayStation 3, much to everyone’s amusement when the band handed it over.) It’s crunchy, drawn-out, lived-in rock, and a little hard to pin down in places. “That’s the thing about this Midwest stuff,” he says. “Shoegaze really concentrated on the melody under the noise, but this stuff was groovier and dronier and harder and heavier.”
Kelley Stoltz
Double Exposure (2013)
Although Double Exposure was “one of our first non-Jack-White-related releases,” there was still an all-in-the-family element to Kelley Stoltz’s entry into the Third Man catalog. Stoltz grew up in a Detroit suburb and attended high school with members of the label’s Detroit office; his band opened for the Raconteurs in 2006. “I think it’s a beautiful, very underrated pop record. And I chalk some of the underrated-ness up to it still being early years for us. [We were] still finding our feet a little bit and not coming out as strong as we are now,” says Swank, who admits its deep-cut status has more to do with human fallibility than dumb luck. “We had to learn on our feet a little bit. This was a whole new thing. It could’ve done better if it had been a little bit later in Third Man’s career.”
Mdou Moctar
Blue Stage Session (2019)
Tuareg guitarist and songwriter Mdou Moctar was still on the up and up when he recorded his Blue Stage session live in September 2017. By the time it was released in 2019, he’d inked a deal with Matador, played in KEXP’s studio, and found a bass player—an instrument notably absent in this direct-to-tape recording. “We were fans very early,” says Swank, who estimates he’s seen Moctar at least 10 times, including in the backyard of the beloved but since-demolished Fond Object Records in East Nashville. “This [record] flies more under the radar than their other Sahel Sounds releases and obviously their Matador releases. So maybe a lot of those fans out there don’t know about this one.”
Long Hots
“Nickel & Dime” (2019)
The second and (to date) final release from Philadelphia trio Long Hots, “Nickel & Dime” is the kind of no-bullshit garage rock Swank likes. “I love really straightforward music. I love really straightforward drumming. That’s how I used to drum. I like it loose and raw and lo-fi, so this band stuck with me just immediately,” he says. The same goes for B-side “Give & Take,” with its thudding rhythm section and pretension-free production that feels downstream of the better part of Castle Face’s roster. If nothing else, it’s fun to see another side of guitarist Rosali Middleman, who, left to her own devices, makes tender, electrified Americana indebted to Crazy Horse.
David Nance Group
“Meanwhile” (2019)
Swank found Omaha underground institution David Nance via Simon Joyner, with whom Nance covered Goat’s Head Soup extra sloppily and in its entirety in 2017. A photocopy of the cease-and-desist letter from the Rolling Stones’s camp was included with the vinyl, and Swank has been “a little bit obsessed” with Nance ever since. “Meanwhile” and its B-side “Credit Line” is less Stones and more Traffic or Blind Faith, culled from the jammier side of ‘70s rock. “He exemplifies the guy who’s just making really cool music in his garage,” says Swank. “He’s got such a fanbase in the—I don’t want to say ‘underground’—but the ‘heads’ in the scene.”
Bush Tetras
“There is a Hum” (2019)
Any decades-old band that helped define a scene runs the risk of disappointing fans and sullying its reputation however, it decides to release new music. Or, as Swank puts it: “No lie, reunion efforts can be less than inspiring.” But Bush Tetras, he feels, avoided this fate beautifully. On the single “There Is A Hum” and its B-sides “Seven Years” and “A Sucker Is Born,” the post-punk outfit that helped drag the downtown New York scene into the ‘80s “nailed what’s already good about them in a different kind of way.” It’s also among the final recordings featuring drummer Dee Pop, who died in October 2021. He’s chugging away in fine form here, and the band sounds as gritty and hip as ever. Swank, who met them in New York, concurs: “I hope I’m that cool when I’m that age.”
