On April 1, Third Man Records released the album's third single, "Freedom at 21", by attaching flexi disc copies of the song to 1000 helium balloons.

[5] Rock supergroup the Dead Weather, another band that included White, released their debut studio album Horehound in 2009 and its successor Sea of Cowards in 2010.

Furthermore, the "freedom of having [his] own studio and having people in Nashville who could come at short notice" enabled White to use "100 different production styles" on Blunderbuss.

[15] While Bob Ludwig was working on mastering, he suggested to Powell that they avoid compression and increase the gain, an idea to which White responded enthusiastically.

[11][16] White preferred analog to digital recordings, finding fault in the latter's variety of "options to change the sounds that you are putting down" since it "[took] all the inherent soulful qualities of what is going on".

[20] The final track, "Take Me with You When You Go", begins with "cool jazz breeziness"[18] written in a 34 time signature,[21] then transitions to a "frantic rock" sound.

[19][23] Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal found the Blunderbuss's "early rock, folk, and country styles" to resemble the Beatles' self-titled album (1968).

[24] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone noted the presence of "made-in-Nashville flourishes" throughout the album, namely the fiddle, the mandolin, and the pedal steel guitar.

[19] "Missing Pieces" features a six-note riff played on a Rhodes piano,[1] and "Sixteen Saltines" consists of "crunchy chords".

[25] "Freedom at 21" uses a "clattering drum pattern" that was achieved by placing a tape echo on a beat that drummer Carla Azar had played.

[8][26] The acoustic guitar and the Wurlitzer electric piano are prominent on the song "Love Interruption",[27][28] which features vocals from Ruby Amanfu alongside the bass clarinet, played by Emily Bowland.

[25] Billboard viewed "I'm Shakin'" and "Trash Tongue Talker" as resembling music on The Party Ain't Over, which White produced.

[24] Mark Edwards of The Sunday Times remarked that "if [White's] lyrics seem oppressively focused on one subject, his music heads happily all over the place, echoing all the previous aspects of his career and wandering into new areas.

In an interview for The New York Times, White said that Blunderbuss's central theme is death, a topic he felt "was overwhelming throughout the lyric writing".

[13] The album's lyrics explore loss,[24] "collapsing relationships",[8] and "breakup emotions of hurt and love",[24] often depicting "weak-willed" men and focusing on "dishonesty, jealousy, [and] immorality".

[27] Dombal viewed the song not as "some masochistic fantasy" but as "a form of self discipline", citing the line "I won't let love disrupt, corrupt, or interrupt me anymore".

[25][22] The titular track "Blunderbuss" uses internal rhymes and "images of decadence" as it describes an adulterous episode between the narrator and a married woman.

[36][37] The same day, a free stream of "Love Interruption" was posted to White's website; the song was made available for purchase on January 31 at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

[39][40] White performed "Love Interruption" and "Sixteen Saltines" on the March 3, 2012 episode of Saturday Night Live with two different backing bands, one all-female and the other all-male.

[60] On February 14, he announced additional performance dates as part of a solo tour consisting of concerts in Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma.

[66][67][68] White's April 27 concert at Webster Hall in New York City was streamed online as part of American Express Unstaged.

Directed by Gary Oldman, the livestream gave viewers the choice to view the concert from a black-and-white shot, a balcony angle, or the director's cut.

[69][53] The Grand Ole Opry gave White a framed blunderbuss as a gift after he sold out concerts at the Ryman Auditorium two nights in a row.

[72] Allison Stewarrt of The Washington Post called the album "restless, cranky and great, although weirdly inconsequential: less a statement of artistic purpose than a stellar collection of songs".

[18] McCormick stated that the album "crackles with life and energy", and he commented that White combines the influences of his previous musical projects "with a spirit of loose invention and the command of a veteran band leader".

[29] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the album as more "emotionally direct" and "musically evasive" than White's previous work.

[73] Billboard's Jem Aswad praised the album's "diversity and musical ambition", and he described it as "familiar enough to please the faithful, adventurous enough to forge a new path forward and satisfying enough to make fans realize anew just how much White has been missed".

She commented that much of White's music depicts him responding with "[v]itriol" to women "threatening his control" and that the lyrics of "Hypocritical Kiss" include "an instance of blatant manipulation".

"[76] The Guardian's Laura Barton disagreed with Misener's article, viewing White's lyrical focus on women as the result of "proximity rather than gender" while asserting that his musical catalog contains "plenty examples of tenderness to counterbalance any venom".

"[65] In another interview for The Guardian with Tim Lewis, White responded to accusations of misogyny: "I don't know where the hell people got that from me because I've done so much work in my life to promote female musicians and artists ...