The White Stripes
“I mean, certainly I'm familiar with our nation's president, Jack Black, but who is Jack White? Is he a senator from our 51st state, New Iraq?” – Mark Prindle
“Ringo knew what was needed, and he
did what was right for the band, down to every little tiny thing needed for
that song. And as much as I love all of the great drummers, there is that thing
where it's about what the band needs. You know, when I hear music, I just hear
the whole thing. I've never been much into picking things apart. It's the
emotion of it that hits me, more than anything technical.” – Meg White,
rationalizing why she’s an awful drummer
“No, Jack White is NOT the 17th greatest guitarist of all time.” – Scott Floman
Albums Reviewed:
All things must come to an end eventually (whether you want them to or not), including my affiliation with H-town, and along with it the free web space they provided for me so nicely. And thus I embark on a new journey on Yahoo! Geocities by reviewing the White Stripes for some reason, the thinking (or lack thereof) behind which is briefly enumerated in the first review on this page. The Stripes are now the second of those “garage band revival critical darlings” I’ve reviewed here, along with the co-leaders of this movement, the Strokes, and after digesting both bands’ ouvres with a fine-toothed, slightly drunk (senior week!) comb, I’ve come to the conclusion that while the Strokes are awesome and the critics are totally right, the White Stripes are not awesome, but good, and the critics are half-right. They’re right that they don’t suck, but they are incorrect in espousing the notion that the Striped Whites are The New Gods of Music, and in doing ridiculous things like putting Jack White in the top 20 guitarists of all time (Rolling Stone) and putting Elephant in the 100 greatest albums of all time before it was even released (NME).
In essence, the White Stripes are a good band, but not a great one by any means, with a very unique and interesting sound and aesthetic (much more unique than the Strokes), with their whole red and white peppermint candy imagery and weird, incestuous brother/sister/ex-husband/ex-wife/who-the-HELL-knows underproduced guitar and drums garage/punk/blues/artsy shit. Or whatever the hell it is. It’s unique, in any case, but within its uniqueness, there isn’t all that much variety, and their style is pretty set and well-defined. They’re very rarely gonna be cheesy or in bad taste. They have the hard riff tunes, slow bluesier ones, fast punkish ones, and acoustic and/or piano little pretty things (usually good) or dumb novelty tunes (usually not so good). Maybe you’ll get a “Hotel Yorba” or “Seven Nation Army” or something that’s just cool, and doesn’t really fit into one of the 4 or 5 pre-established “Generic White Stripes song” categories, but not too often, and you can break almost everything they’ve done on their studio albums pretty cleanly into one of those genres. Very few White Stripes songs blow out loud, but I feel like sometimes too many are just “there,” and are definitely good, but no more. This is exacerbated by the band’s low-grade affliction of U2 frontloading disease, and the requisite handful of fantastic songs are usually bunched together at the start. This doesn’t really offend me when they do it, since they clearly don’t give much of a crap about commerciality (unlike, oh, I dunno…U2), but it’s still a little annoying. But I still like this band a good bit, and I’m here to give them their due, though not really close to as big a due as most critics give them.
Lineup! Jack White is a good, emotive, yet slightly whiney singer (miles better than Geddy Lee!) and quite a good guitarist, especially when you consider how big of a sound he’s able to get out of one un-overdubbed guitar and NO BASS, and Meg White is one of the worst drummers on the planet, and critics who praise her drumming are just fucking retarted. Although her complete lack of talent does sort of fit what the band’s trying to do. And that is the end of the lineup paragraph.
And, onto the reviews!
The White Stripes (1999)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Jimmy The Exploder”
It’s about damn time I write a review again, right? It’s only been two months. Stupid “senior week” and “graduation” and “constant drinking.” It’s work, you know. It’s long and tiring and it sometimes chafes real bad, too. But the site must continue! I paid, like, fifteen dollars to Geocities for that ad-free site with 25 MB’s of web space package, and I’m not about to end this thing now that I’ve started paying for it. So here we are, and upon restarting this website, I faced a conundrum: do a classic, deservingly famous old band that everyone who surfs all these sites would love for me to do? Or just do one of Al’s favorites?
Naturally, I chose Al, and so here we are. The White Stripes, and more specifically the debut album from the White Stripes, The White Stripes. Jack and Meg have evolved their sound over the course of four albums some, but not tons, mind you, and the main reasons I’m rating this one a point lower than their others are the lack of any truly WOW songs, like “Seven Nation Army” or “Fell in Love With a Girl” or “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles” (WHOOPS! Wrong band…), and the slightly weaker production values on this one. The band is all intentionally “lo-fi” and that’s their aesthetic and that’s fine. Much better than being intentionally vomit-inducing synth-laden eighties cheese merchants. It actually works for them, and picturing, say, “Broken Bricks” recorded with glossily slicked-over boig studio commercial guitars is just silly. But the lo-fi-ness is a little more noticeable here than the others, even though I believe Elephant is the only one recorded on a major label (is that right? I’m just guessing). The production’s not BAD like some of those late-eighties Sub Pop Seattle recordings (blech!), you see, and I do admire how Jack can get such a full sound out of one guitar with no bass or overdubs (and a toddler who just picked up drumsticks yesterday providing the percussion backing, for that matter), but “garage rock” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “sounds like it was recorded in the back corner of a dingy garage covered in syphilitic rats.”
Anyway,
just like the Stripes are consistently “lo-fi” in their recording style, they
also, as I mentioned in the intro, consistently have a smidgeon of U2 disease, and
although it’s at its most blatant on White Blood Cells, I sense a pinch
of frontloading on every Stripes album, including this one. It starts out great enough, with the vicious
“Jimmy the Exploder” (kick-ass!), the Robert-Johnson-via-the-Rolling Stones
cover “Stop Breaking Down” (well done!), and the…um…slightly less vicious “The
Big Three Killed My Baby.” “Suzy Lee” is
pretty good, too, and “Sugar Never Tasted So Good” charmingly begins the
Stripes’ tradition of putting in cute little novelty acoustic and/or piano
tracks amidst their “fiery blues-rock explosions,” or whatever you wanna call a
generic White Stripes track. The middle
contains some very tasty short little fast energy bursts, too, like “Astro”
(which contains exactly one lyric, “Maybe <insert name here> does
the Astro!!!!”, and rules) and “Broken Bricks,” which is like a
precursor to all their “Fell in Love With Some Chick” and “Hypnotize”-esque
tracks later on, but do we really need seventeen songs?
I don’t believe we do, and as I listen to this record a lot, it
sometimes degenerates into a fuzzy, lo-fi, monotonous mess. But, to be fair, that’s usually just when I’m
not paying attention.
Whatever, there are plenty of nice
tracks left. The Dylan cover “One More
Cup of Coffee” is as well-done as the Robert-Johnson-via-the-Rolling-Stones
one, “Screwdriver” has a totally generic yet still nice guitar riff/explosion
thing that actually sounds exactly like that Jet song (No, not the one that
sounds just like AC/DC. No, not the one
that sounds just like Oasis. The first
one that came out. You know, the one
that sounds just like 800 other bands…fuck, why am I making fun of Jet right
now? I actually like what I’ve heard of
them. I’m just a jack-ass…). “St. James Infirmary Blues” is a disturbingly
off-kilter piano thing that I have no idea how to classify except as a “piano
thing,” but it’s neat. Enough of these
songs, however, make me go “what the hell does THAT sound like?” to slightly
annoy me. And I’ve listened to this
record at least ten times.
“Wasting My Life.” “Do (Me
Harder, Big Boy).” “Slicker Drips.” I have no goddamn idea how these songs go at
ALL. But I can safely say they’re all
100 times better than “With Arms Wide Open.”
HA!
CREED BROKE UP! HEEEEEE!!!!! CAN’T WAIT FOR SCOTT STAPP’S SOLO ALBUM! THAT WILL RULE MERCILESS ASS!!!!!
Actually, I think it has the
potential to be the worst album of all time, but let’s not jinx it. *Crosses fingers*
In conclusion: I like this album. It’s actually consistently pretty solid, but nothing really gets me, and it has too many songs. I wish I could say they got a lot better, too. They don’t. They get a medium-sized better.
De Stijl (2000)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Little Bird”
You know what I like? Will Ferrell. He’s funny. You know what else I like? Cottage cheese. It’s tasty. But you know what else I like? Slide guitar! And so does Jack White. Or so did Jack White temporarily in 2000. Because it’s all over this record. That type of boogie-hard rock Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying” slide guitar that’s so…so tasty. It makes just pretty OK songs like “Death Letter” and “Sister, Do You Know My Name?” and “A Boy’s Best Friend”…why, it makes them pretty good! Not just pretty OK. Pretty GOOD. THAT, my friends, is some serious mid-size improvement! But the big slide guitar star here is “Little Bird,” which sounds almost disturbingly like a 3-minute instrumental section clipped directly from “In My Time of Dying.” And not in a rip-off way. More of a tribute way, I think. Either way, the song’s forktastic, and the best one the White Undies Ruined by Smelly Brown Stripes had done up to this point.
To be
honest, though, there could’ve been some slide guitar tastiness hiding inside
the debut album a little bit. I just
wouldn’t have heard it. Bad, bad
production on that one. This one? Decidedly OK!
Decent! Not bad! Good for them. It’s still “lo-fi,” but just in a “we don’t
have a bassist and our drummer is a toddler who’s never played drums before and
we don’t overdub anything…ever” kinda way, instead of an “all of that stuff,
plus we recorded it in the back corner of my nasty garage” kinda way like on
the debut. The guitars sound like at
least the band attempted to “produce” them and paid attention to, you
know, dynamics and stuff, instead of just letting Jack sludge as loud and
bluesy as he could and going “Right-o!
Smashing!” as if they were a couple of gum disease-infected wankers from
Songwise, there are a few new interesting things not on the debut as well. “Little Bird” would have no reason to exist were it not for the slide guitar, and I’m not sure if “Death Letter” would, either. “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)” is a charming little pop song, the likes of which you will certainly not find on the debut. “I’m Bound to Pack it Up” is some pretty acousticicity that provides a nice contrast to the light, acoustic novelty dipshit tracks the Stripes like to sprinkle their albums with (I’m looking at you, “Your Southern Can is Mine”), as it’s a light, bouncy acoustic track that isn’t a novelty, and for the White Stripes that’s sort of a novelty in itself.
Anyway, so we’ve got better production! Better songs! Fewer songs (only THIRTEEN!!!!) also. And slide guitar! All that adds up to a decent improvement from the debut, but not all that big of one, because there’s still some filler and generic White Stripes material to sift through. This is a band that repeats itself in the types of songs they include, and even where they place them in the album sequence. Like the short fast energy bursts in the album’s second half (this time “Let’s Build a Home” (the token “Fell in Love With a Girl”-sounding song) and “Jumble Jumble” (one of the token “not really all that good” songs)). “Your Southern Can is Mine” is all novelty, all the time, and though the band would eventually get a crapload more annoying in this department, I can’t support this song much at all, nor can I put much personal enthusiasm behind “Why Can’t You Be Nicer to Me?”, which continues the grand Stripes tradition of coming up with a repetitive, semi-annoying riff, playing it really “lo-fi,” dude, and then letting Meg White be a toddler to provide the percussion. “Jumble Jumble” is also like this. All of these songs are also at the end, and after the slow, killer “A Boy’s Best Friend” and the kick-ass “Let’s Build a Home” (every album has a song that sounds like “Fell in Love With a Girl,” yes, but they usually rule, so it’s OK!), it might be a good idea to realize the White Stripes have low-grade U2 disease and turn the album off. Not because the last three tunes suck. They’re OK. But that’s it. They’re just…OK. Not really up to snuff, if you buff my muff, and I think you do, sho’ nuff!
I sort of meandered into criticism, there, didn’t I? Oh well. Every White Stripes album has its problems, and they’re usually the same ones (too many random just sorta OK songs, dipshit novelty tracks, a few half-assed riffs that go nowhere, a toddler who’s never played drums before for a drummer), but they’re in shorter supply here than the debut, the production is better, and the good songs are GOODER! So call it a nice, semi-low 8. But still an 8. And tell Meg White to get some sun, for god sakes.
Mike Noto (thepublicimage79@hotmail.com) writes:
OK, one thing out of the way:
The White Stripes are not the New Gods of Rawk
Moo-Zic Incarnate. But they are really darned good, and considering much of
today's musical climate, that's cause for some celebration. Jack White is
one damned talented individual, and Meg White...well, Meg's hugely better
than she was when they started, and you're way too cruel to her - the
drumming on "Elephant" and "Get Behind Me Satan" sounds
fine and much better
to me than it was before. apparently she'd gotten her drumset like a month
before the first album was recorded...huh? I have to admit that I am biased
towards them, though, cause I live in
actual Hotel Yorba on occasion. (The word on the street is not to stay
there. Definitely.)
The White Stripes are interesting. I really like where they're going
currently, and I especially like them now that Meg White's drumming is
steady and competent (this means that I think their last two records have
been their best). This record, "De Stijl," was their second record,
and
already there was significant talent brewing. But this record is frontloaded
out the ass. "You're Pretty Good Looking" is an ok opener, and
"Hello
Operator" is fun enough, with a hilarious drum solo limited to snare rim
alone, but I don't think it's amazingly fantabulous. That honor of course
goes to the next song, "Little Bird," which is FUCKING AMAZING and a
better
blues-rock song than anything I've heard in a loooonnng-ass time - dig that
slide guitar. "Apple Blossom" is a good acoustic song, but "I'm
Bound To
Pack It Up" rules because it uses acoustic 12-string on a great riff and
is
therefore improved to godly proportions. It reminds me of Zeppelin III a
little, and that can only be a good thing. The cover of Son House's "Death
Letter" also rules the school and kicks ass, and "Sister Do You Know
My
Name" is nice, has good slide guitar. The next two tracks don't make much
impression, and really the only thing after "Sister..." that gets me
going
is the righteously blastin' "Let's Build A Home." "Jumble
Jumble" is
annoying as hell, and the other two aren't much either, but "Your Southern
Can Is Mine" is funny enough, I guess (and Blind Willie McTell wrote it,
so
it is better than the run-of-the-mill novelty track Jack has to paste onto
the end of every Stripes album). So this gets an 8, but the later records
are better. Some great songs here though, especially "Little Bird"
and "I'm
Bound To Pack It Up."
To sum up: Hey Jack, try some slide guitar again on the next Stripes album;
and I agree with the fact that the drumming blows on the early records
(e.g., on this album), but Elephant and Get Behind Me Satan are way better
in that department.
White Blood Cells (2001)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Fell In Love With A Girl”
Somehow, this one looks like both progress and, um, un-progress (regression? Yeah, that’d be good, pretend I typed that) from De Stool. On men the one hand, Jack and that toddler’s best songs are the best they’ve been yet, and a handful of the first few tunes here are brilliant. On de the other hand, they’ve regressed towards the “way too many damn songs” model of their debut, a fair number of tunes in the second half are just OK and not that memorable, their U2 disease is at its worst, and, worst of all, after mastering its use for one album, Jack has DITCHED the slide guitar! Bastard.
Anyway,
after all that, I’d probably rate this one about equal with De Poop as a
low 8, even if they frontload the damn thing like their name is Bono and they
have really bad hairplugs. “Dead Leaves
and the Dirty Ground,” “Hotel Yorba,” and “Fell in Love With a Girl But Got
Violently Beaten by her Abusive, Controlling, Jock Boyfriend” are all better
than anything on their first two albums, even without any slide guitar
(ass…). “Dead Leaves” has a superb
riff, maybe the best they’ve ever come up with, “Hotel Yorba” is, musically,
thus far a near-complete anomaly in their catalog (acoustic hick backwoods
upbeat fun jig! Hee!), and “Fell in Love
With a Girl” is the song that made me grudgingly admit that these two pale,
odd-looking cutesy little lo-fi people from
OK! Anyway.
There are a good number of good songs left on here, but for the most
part the rest of the record is about the same quality as the debut, only with
better production, and the higher rating comes from the orgasmo-songs at the
beginning (which is different than the higher rating for De I’m Tired of
Making Poop Jokes, where everything just sort of generally improved
overall). I like very much the use of
multiple keyboards and goo in “I’m Finding it Harder to be a Gentleman” (maybe
the only true example of a production advance since the last record), and
“Expecting” has a very nice, groovy little riff in there, but after those first
five tracks (i.e. the three awesome ones and the two I just mentioned), things
get a little shaky. Not BAD, mind you,
just “shaky,” like the debut. The
undisputed highlight of the rest of the album is DEFINITELY “Aluminum,” which
has no words or real structure at all, but is built upon a singular slow,
nasty-sounding riff and freaked-out sounding “AAAHHHH!!!” vocal harmony things
in the side speakers. But, goddamn,
Jack’s guitar tone is fucking ace. It’s
so crushingly heavy, and it’s
clear he doesn’t really give a damn if any feedback is getting through,
either. The “song” is just a sloppy,
crushing, fun mess, and it KICKS
ASS.
“Little Room” is none of these things, however, and this little 50-second nothing track begins that “rest of the record” I keep alluding to and haven’t delved into yet. Until NOW! A lot of the songs are basically based on one pretty simple musical idea or riff or something, and truly display how hit-or-miss this band can be when they refuse to overdub much of anything. See, if the riff isn’t totally up to snuff, or maybe Jack’s vocal melody could be better, what else is there? There’s no bass. There usually aren’t any pianos or keyboards or double bassoons or autoharps or whatever. It’s not like Meg is gonna do anything interesting. But since the band’s aesthetic is always pretty nice, Generic White Stripes Songs (bar novelty tunes) are usually a) good or b) tolerable. “Now Mary” has a nice riff and acoustic underpinning, so it’s a winner, and so are a few others, like “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known,” as well as the quiet little prettiness of “We’re Going to Be Friends.” But “I Can Learn” drifts by without making much of an impression, and both “The Union Forever” and “I Smell a Rat” sort of make half of this paragraph totally useless by being borderline annoying. But maybe that means they’re novelty tunes? I dunno. “This Protector” also continues the Stripes tradition of ending their dark, sloppy, garage-blues records with lightweight filler tunes, but it’s not really any better or worse than “Your Southern Can is Mine,” just different, as a pseudo-piano ballad instead of a hokey country nothing.
You know, evaluating White Stripes records is actually pretty hard. I explained why in the intro, so if you didn’t read it, please scroll up now, but if you did, you’ll know it’s because I said they’re very set in their ways, and, beyond a handful of songs per album, whether you like this tune or that depends completely on personal taste or impression. Like “I like this riff” or “that melody line is damn annoying to me.” Maybe you think that “Now Mary” is dumb and that “I Think I Smell a Rat” is paranoid and powerful. I happen to think “Now Mary” is pretty cool and “I Think I Smell My Ass” is annoying, but, see, that’s just me, and until someone starts paying me for writing these reviews, I’m gonna be as objective as I damn well want. If you want objectivity, here are a few things: The White Stripes, objectively, put way too many damn songs on their albums (even if their albums add up to 40 minutes at the end anyway), Meg White is neither hot nor a good drummer at all, and the George W. Bush administration, if given four more years, will irretrievably ruin this country, all minorities, women, gays, and people under 30 will move to Canada, and us Canadians will repeatedly kick your theocratic American asses in basketball.
Elephant (2003)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Seven Nation Army”
Yeah! Here we go. Some real progress. And more of a “high and closer to a 9 than a 7” 8 than the low 8’s received by the last two records. An 8.5, if you will, but I don’t use decimals on this site because we all know decimals are just an invention of European Socialist Commie Pinko-sympathizing wine-drinking assdouches and real Americans only use fractions and DAMN WELL LIKE IT. And since typing fractions on a computer is only slightly less difficult than complex linear algebra, I decided to just do away with any kind of between-number rating specificity marker, because real Americans always take the easy way out and DAMN WELL LIKE IT.
Anyway, Elephant, whose title makes as much as sense as the Dubya’s insisting that a meeting between Osama and Iraqi government officials in the Sudan like 10 years ago or some shit CONCLUSIVELY PROVES that Saddam and Osama were “in cahoots” in some respects (though not on the 9/11 attacks, at least Bush admits that), when the INDEPENDENT, BI-PARTISAN 9/11 commission contends that Iraq’s response to the meeting and Osama “I have Marfan Syndrome!” bin Laden’s asking them for help was basically a big “Um, yeah…I think I have go…over there…now…um….we’ll…uh…get back to you on that” followed by ignoring phone messages and letting Osama pine away for them in secret (Sorry, it’s been one of those news days that pisses me off. I.e., like, every other news day). The album is definitely the band’s best yet, and is the first one which makes me sort of agree with all the press they’ve received, at least until it goes overboard, like, as mentioned in the intro, NME putting it in their Top 100 albums of all time a month before it was even released, because British music magazines are almost as ridiculous as American ones (the only difference being that they blow up decent acts into gods, whereas American mags do this with utter shit acts as well).
Goddamnit, I’m rambling. That’ll happen. I mean, it is me, after all. But I’ll stop now, because “Seven Nation Army” is the best song the Stripes have ever done and one of the best singles of the past few years. It sounds odd saying this about a band that spent their first three albums treating the bass guitar like scabies, but I’m gonna say it anyway: Listen to that bassline!!! It RULES! Even if it’s not actually a bassline and Jack just tuned his guitar really low and that’s retarted, it RULES! But my favorite parts are those phased-out guitar lines that come in and match the basslines. Fucking god almighty, they’re phenomenal. And they have a unique, interesting guitar tone! Right there’s another difference between this and the Stripes’ earlier records. Attention being paid to varying guitar tones and use of overdubs and a general attention to production touches. This is definitely the least “lo-fi” of their albums thus far, and I’m glad they’re finally starting to break out of that fundamentally retarted, self-imposed shell. Lo-fi is fine. Again, it’s better than cheesy and overproduced, but eventually you have to grow as artists! And I know adding a pseudo-bassline and overdubbing a guitar solo and recording a few detailed vocal harmonies (OOOOO!!! I LOVE “There’s No Room For You Here!”) aren’t exactly historic advances, but it’s all about baby steps, man. Next thing you know, maybe Jack’ll tie Meg to a sailboat and go out on the water.
Before I get to the negativity that gives this record an 8, let me praise it just a little bit more. “Black Math” is loud, crashing, and excellent, “I Want to be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart” reutilizes the SLIDE GUITAR (!), “You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket” is some more acoustic loveliness, “Ball and Biscuit” is a seven-minute blues jam tour-de-force, and I hope the Stripes continue more in this direction in the future, “The Hardest Button to Button” is no “Seven Nation Army of BRILLIANCE,” but it’s still a good single, and “Little Acorns” is cool, creepy, and interesting. But we still have some problems. First off, “Hypnotize” is just a rewrite of “Fell in Love With a Girl,” and not in the “similar in tone and feel” sense. More in the “self-ripoff because the model it’s based on was a huge hit” sense, and that can’t help but annoy me a little bit, even if the song is still fine, though clearly far weaker than its predecessor. And then there are the novelty tunes. Fucking novelty tunes. The band has always persisted in putting a few on each album, and they’ve never been good, but they haven’t been bad either, and I’ve tolerated them. But goddammit. What the hell is “In the Cold, Cold Night?” Who thought it was a good idea for Meg to sing? It sounds like they’re going for that kind of Velvet Underground Maureen Tucker cute little girl vibe, but in the context of the album it just doesn’t work at all. And the closing “Well It’s True that We Love One Another” is absolutely atrocious. Both Meg and some other chick (who is a worse singer than Meg, somehow) trade off lines with Jack in some weird, incredibly annoying country vamp pile of massive bullshit that closes the album on as bad a note as “Seven Nation Army” opens it. I probably wouldn’t give the album a 9 anyway, but the presence of this song makes such a consideration clearly impossible. No, it is NOT jolly good, Bruce.
But let’s just leave that be for now. Despite its near-50 minute length (easily the Stripes’ longest record to date), I get that “too many songs” feeling on this one less than any of their other records (even De Feel of My Touch, Baby, which actually has one less song than Hippopotamus). It’s their most compact record. It seems less like a bunch of random songs tossed together and more like an album, which I bet is partly due to the presence of “Ball and Biscuit,” the first quasi-“centerpiece” they’ve produced. The best songs on the album also continue their trend of getting better and better, and the production is the band’s best yet. But the novelty tunes really mar this one, and those little interludes of silliness just don’t fit in this time, probably because the record is actually cohesive. But, even if it’s not quite as good as all the critics say it is, Elephant is still the band’s best offering yet, and Meg White still can’t drum worth bullshit.
amattaway@wmconnect.com writes:
BRAD! I've been checking your
goddamn site every day for you to return, man! Damnit, I'm glad you're back!
Just in time for the Sox to win the Series. Everyone was rooting for your team
the entire way 'cept the Yankee folks. And who gives a fuck about the damn
Yankee fans? Congratulations!
Anyway, just to make my comment somewhat useful. Let me say I like the White
Stripes and their fourth album, "Elephant", quite a bit, but to any
fans of the album like myself, listen to "Ball & Biscuit" and
then Bob Dylan's "Meet Me In The Morning". Jack White ripped off Bob
Dylan! And Bob Dylan probably ripped off someone else. Yeah. Well, anyway...
Glad you're back around.
Sincerely,
Extremely Clingy Asshole
Get Behind Me Satan (2005)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Little
Ghost”
The first album of the summer season since the new System album to make me excited at all (ofcourse, once the Strokes and the Lips pushed their release dates back to 2006, that sort of ruined the whole summer record extravaganza I had planned on), the fantastically-titled Get Behind Me Satan shows three things about the White Stripes (OK, who are we kidding: about Jack White). First, due to their continued insistence on recording albums in two weeks and using no overdubs or recording budget whatsoever, they are incredibly stubborn. Second, because this album is actually dominated by lovely piano and acoustic guitar-based tracks with relatively few traditional Stripes guitar rockers, they are impressively willing and able to expand musically (albeit, as I said before, unwilling to expand, um, productionally). Third, because there are a handful of sloppy filler-ish tunes tacked onto the end that I find myself not really liking all that much, they are annoying and stupid and I hate them.
Kidding! I actually really like the Stripes by this point (I mean, there are four consecutive 8’s up there, eh?). And the complete departure from normal Stripes-sounding tracks that we find here is a very nice surprise that definitely makes me admire this band more than I had in the past (when I just dug ‘em…but now they’re, like, artists or some crap, I guess). As I’ve recovered from oral surgery over the past few days, eating anything I can suck down in goo form, popping painkillers like Skittles (including the Vicodin the doctor gave me which promptly made me vomit…I stopped taking those), and freaking out this morning upon waking up to find a foul taste in my mouth and immediately assuming I had like three dry sockets (only then realizing I’d been asleep for like 15 hours and it was just robo-morning mouth), this record album has provided a harmonious soundtrack to my newfound friend, mouth pain (which, mind you, is far from subsided…just enough that I can lead a relatively normal life now instead of lying in bed all day…I’m scooping out of a jar of applesauce right now). Once you get the fuzzy guitar lead track single out of the way (in this case “Blue Orchid,” which has a fantastic guitar tone but otherwise seems a bit rote), the real fun starts, as you get probably the best five-track sequence of Stripes songs yet (and not a one has an electric guitar in it! Dooby!). Being a retard, I ofcourse love the two-minute acoustic jaunt goof fun track “Little Ghost” more than anything else, but that’s not to say the xylophone-dominated “The Nurse,” irresistible piano-pop “My Doorbell” (“When you gonna ring it, when you gonna ring it?”), lovely (and lovely-named) “Forever for Her (Is Over for Me)” (which has a glockenspiel!), or rump-shaking piano and whatever-that-percussion-instrument-is-that-all-the-professional-reviews-have-been-citing-that’s-only-in-like-three-actual-songs “The Denial Twist” are any weaker. It’s just my personal preference, you see. The songs are very upbeat, bouncy, melodic, and off-kilter, yet despite being on completely new instrumentation for the band, are still unmistakably Stripes. Great stuff.
The second half, just like with every Stripes record, let’s you down a bit (at least it lets me down). “White Moon” is just boring, for instance, and the closer “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” is yet another annoying novelty track that fucks up the end of a perfectly good White Stripes album and makes me want to see just how long Jack and Meg White would survive in a tanning booth, though I suppose nothing else is really bad. Actually, outside of those two unfortunate missteps, I enjoy quite a bit of what’s left, just not as much as the record’s opening half. Both “Instinct Blues” and “Red Rain” are fine, energetic, though unspectacular blues guitar tracks, “Take, Take, Take” is actually remarkably similar to the first half in its energetic, melodic, acoustic self, and “As Ugly as I Seem” is very, very pretty! The classic acoustic guitars and bongos instrumentation scheme never fails to succeed when used in moderation (Hello, Foo Fighters!) and with nicely melodic material, now, does it? And “Passive Manipulation” is the token “let’s let Meg sing because it’s a retarted idea” track that every Stripes album has, but it’s OK because it’s only 30 seconds long and therefore not annoying. Maybe Jack’s finally realizing Meg’s only worth is her drumming. Which therefore means she has no worth at all. Ha!
Whatever, I’d do her (what, you think I’m picky? Do you know where I live?), so let’s keep her around because she’s marginally cute, in a really pale kind of way. I suppose Jack needs someone to play drums for him on stage, because lord knows he does absolutely everything else. Good record here, in any case. Interesting, varied, melodic, quirky…Stripes-ish! See, notwithstanding the complete change in artistic priorities on this one, a White Stripes song sounds like a White Stripes song, whether it’s played on guitar or piano or glockenspiel or zither or whatever. This album might convert a few new fans to the Stripes’ cause, but it will definitely not push any away. Elephant’s a little better, but this one’s second on the ladder, not that there’s much to separate all of these records. It’s consistency. Hooray consistency!
Icky Thump (2007)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “You Don’t
Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)”
I’d love to move from the periphery of the White Stripes lovefest to right in the middle of the clusterfuck, but I might have to remove myself from the party altogether soon, for this is the first White Stripes album yet I’ve been actively disappointed by. Considering this is their “return to heavy, stomping ROCK!” and I’m the idiot who likes heavy guitars, and considering most reviews of this album have been overwhelmingly positive (“It’s better than Get Behind Me Satan!” “It’s as good as Elephant!”), this may come as a surprise to you, but I just don’t see what all the “wow, listen to that heavy, stomping ROCK!” fuss is about. Big, heavy riffs are all well and good, but if they’re not accompanied by structure or melody (or, failing that, they’re not the most ass-kicking things ever laid to tape), then I’m afraid I’m gonna have to sit something out. So the title track and “Bone Broke” and the heavy parts in “300 MPH Torrential Outpoor Blues”…yes, you’re right, they’re “heavy, stomping ROCK!”, but just because Jack White’s writing an album and it has “heavy, stomping ROCK!” on it doesn’t mean it has to be fantastically awesomely great. It can just be pretty good, and ultimately disappointing given the quality of most of the White Stripes’ output (especially their last two records).
I do like this album. I just don’t think it’s more than “pretty good,” and that’s where I differ from most of the reviews I’ve seen. I actually like “300 MPH Torrential Outpoor Blues” a lot…because of the non-heavy parts, which have a nice little groove and some of the best Jack vocals on the album (speaking of which, Jack might be in the best vocal form he’s ever been in; listen to “Rag and Bone,” for instance, and see how much fucking fun the guy is having). This is probably the heaviest album the Stripes have ever recorded (except maybe the first…but I haven’t listened to that in forever, so sure, why not), but, like I alluded to before, in writing all these songs with heavy, pounding, grimy-sounding guitar riffs, it seems like Jack’s compensated by leaving the structure and melodies of many of the songs simply underdeveloped. “Little Cream Soda” has some neat guitars in it…but what are they doing, exactly? And what’s the song’s melody? See, I’m not sure, and that’s the problem. Jack’s monologue is entertaining, but as a song it’s just not all that strong, despite the “heavy, stomping ROCK!” And “I’m Slowly Turning Into You” just sucks. The verses are inoffensive, but the chorus is abysmal. The riff is so processed it almost gives me a headache, and Jack’s vocals are off-key, too high, and positively whiney. Jack White should not whine. That’s not what he does. Not cool.
Look, I know Jack White can write good, catchy songs. I have Elephant and Get Behind Me Satan as proof, but it seems like he’s concentrated the album’s entire “catchiness” quotient into the impossibly hooky and awesome “You Don’t Know What Love is (You Just Do as You’re Told),” which thankfully also employs a lighter and more immediately pleasing guitar tone in an altogether successful attempt at being really, really good. I generally like the goof and/or novelty songs this time too, like the ridiculous “Conquest,” which adds some sort of Mexican trumpet troupe to the stomping heaviness, the super-fun “Rag & Bone,” and the token acoustic goofball closer “Effect & Cause” (which is notable because usually the token acoustic goofball closer, you know, blows). Dig also the slide guitar in “Catch Hell Blues” that brings back fond memories of all those super slide guitar tracks on De Stijl. I must, however, object to “Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn,” which has been the impetus for all sorts of silly bagpipe-related talk, like “They’re totally back and they rock hard – with BAGPIPES!!!” (courtesy of The Mythical Al). Look, this is just like the random percussion instrument I don’t even remember the name of everyone kept talking about with Get Behind Me Satan that turned out to be in three songs and wasn’t the dominant force in any of them. So Jack thought it would be a good idea to make bagpipes a background instrument for a song that sounds exactly like every single fucking track from Led Zeppelin III. Good for him. This does not mean the White Stripes should be commended for their use of bagpipes. They wrote possibly the most unoriginal-sounding song in their entire catalog and had a guy play bagpipes in the background. Whoop-de-damn-do.
I really do like this album. The “heavy, stomping ROCK!” guitars do sound cool, Jack (except for “I’m Slowly Turning into You”) is in excellent vocal form, “You Don’t Know What Love is” can go right up there with their best single-type tunes, “Rag & Bone” might be the most fun song they’ve ever done, etc. But, on the whole, there just aren’t enough tasty, melodic bits in here to justify anything higher than a 7 (did he leave them at Brendan Benson’s house?), and I think it’s clearly weaker than anything they’ve released since their debut (and I’m not even sure it’s all that much better than that one, either). Hell, the riffs aren’t even that good either. I’ve heard this stuff from the White Stripes before, dammit! And it had a better melody that time, too. So yes, still pretty good, but on the whole the first time I can honestly say I’ve been disappointed by a White Stripes record. Great album title, though.
It's quite possible that I'm your third man, girl, but it's a
fact that I'm the seventh son.