Watch Jack White’s Haunted Funk-Strut ‘Black Bat Licorice’ on Fallon

Rock n’ Roll’s Willy Wonka himself Mr. Jack White paid a visit to the Tonight Show on Thursday night, where he performed his badass quirkfest Lazaretto cut ‘That Black Bat Licorice.” With 29 Grammys under his belt and a few more to potentially add this weekend, as well as releases from The Raconteurs and/or The Dead Weather on the way, Jack’s televised performance was a fine lead-in to a banner year for the Third Man Records honcho.

A blasting Halloween-funk strut, “That Black Bat Licorice” is the only song on Lazaretto “that I really put in the album of my own personality,” White told NPR. It’s enough to make you want to slap the man with baby-blue gloves for witholding, because the song is goddamned magnificence. Spitfire rap-flow vocal delivery, dropping spastic wordplay flourishes around an aggressively angular instrumental frame and a blood-boiling hatred for that nasty black candy. It’s fun, it’s dangerous, attitude for days, and worth the record’s price all its own.

“Now say the same damn thing with a violin,” he barks at a freshly shorn Lillie Mae, who obliges before a closing threat. Watch below as Jimmy Fallon looks giddy enough to explode.

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