White Stripes (Sympathy, 1999), recorded in their basement, was a modest endeavour that rekindled visions of Jon Spencer covering Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin (The Big Three Killed My Baby, Sugar Never Tasted So Good, Jimmy the Exploder). Leveraging atonal guitars, sloppy vocals and trash rhythms, the White Stripes achieved a sense of poignancy and urgency that is truly the soul of the blues.

The more professional De Stijl (Sympathy, 2000) offered a wealth of sonic extracts of blues music without actually playing blues music. You're Pretty Good Looking is classic power-pop, with a refrain and a riff that have been heard countless times since the early Kinks singles. Apple Blossom apes the catchy folk-rock of the Turtles. Best of the melodic items is perhaps Sister Do You Know My Name, boosted by lilting piano figures.
On the other hand, Hello Operator boasts the aggressive vocals of Chicago's rhythm'n'blues and the guitar of hyper-syncopated blues-rock a` la Free. Little Bird is little more than a loud and insistent blues riff a` la Slim Harpo. Best is perhaps I'm Bound to Pack It Up, a quintessential Delta blues imitation sung the way the British bands used to in the early 1960s. Of course, all this referencing the past is a double-edged sword: Let's Build a Home evokes the style of the
Animals, but the comparison only shows how inferior the White Stripes are. And compare the playful Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me with the Tremeloes' Here Comes My Baby (1967).
Jack White's guitar is not innovative, inventive or acrobatic. It is merely referential. His vocals are even less original. Royal Trux played the same revival music a decade before, but with a lot more passion and competence.

White Blood Cells (Sympathy, 2001) is a mixed bag. On one hand, the band is still capable of an amazing synthesis of roots-rock and hard-rock (Dead Leaves and The Dirty Ground), sometimes augmented with punk fury (Fell in Love with a Girl), and sometimes tempered with agonizing bluesy tones (I'm Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman). Alas, the two minutes of non-sequitur stoner-metal Aluminum are the exception, not the rule. On the other hand, the catchy and martial country-rock rigmarole of Hotel Yorba, the power ballads I Can't Wait (the album's melodic zenith) and The Same Boy You've Always Known, as well as the simple lullaby of We're Going To Be Friends signal a new, more conventional direction. Both sides are executed with the kind of "detached enthusiasm" that pervades the revisionists of the year 2000. Too much filler prevents the album from being the milestone that most critics deemed it to be. Nonetheless, the White Stripes became overnight superstars.

Surprisingly, the band did not turn radio-friendly in response to the hype. Elephant (V2, 2003) continues their fusion of Led Zeppelin and John Spencer Blues Explosion with both driving punk-ish numbers (the feverish, swirling Black Math, the demonic Girl You Have No Faith in Medicine, Hypnotize, the Stooges-ian Little Acorns) and brooding visceral numbers (Seven Nation Army, The Hardest Button To Button). The leader opens his heart in the seven-minute agonizing rhythm'n'blues meditation, Ball and Biscuit, a veritable tribute to black Chicago circa 1950.
On the soft side of things, the White Stripes continue to develop the form of the power ballad into something else, as proven by the two top laments, the tender I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself and the solemn I Want To Be The Boy. You've Got Her In Your Pocket is the barenaked lullaby du jour, The Air Near My Fingers boasts the catchiest melodic progression, And Meg White sings the low-key anguished In The Cold Cold Night. It's True That We Love One Another seems to make fun of Ray Charles' Hit The Road Jack and Sonny & Cher's I Got You Babe.
They occasionally repeat themselves (There's No Home for You Here is reminiscent of Dead Leaves) and frequently quote other people's music but overall their sound is still getting more personal and growing up.

The White Stripes entered their adult stage with Get Behind Me Satan (V2, 2005), that, unlike its predecessor, does not repeat White Stripes cliches but rather expands them into many directions, employing more piano and emphasizing the folk elements over the blues ones. This album thrives in the fuzzy territory where eclectic and derivative become one. It feels, overall, more more melancholy and content than the previous ones, as if juvenile anger were slowly being replaced by middle-age's resignation. The classic White Stripes sound is perhaps best preserved in The Nurse and the noir vignette Take Take Take. The energetic Blue Orchid, the convoluted bluesy Red Rain, the majestic Forever For Her, the exuberant alt-bluegrass Little Ghost, and the bizarre disco-punk of My Doorbell and The Denial Twist use the same building blocks to create a new kind of architecture.

Se il "post-rock" è stata la chiave per capire gli anni ‘90, forse il "pre-rock" sarà la chiave per capire il 2000. I White Stripes sono un duo di Detroit formato da Jack White e sua sorella Meg White, rispettivamente chitarra e batteria. Alcuni singoli introdussero il loro blues-rock fuori moda: Let's Shake Hands (Italy, 1997), Lafayette Blues, The Big Three Killed My Baby (Sympathy For The Record Industry).

White Stripes (Sympathy, 1999), registrato nel rustico di casa, fu un modesto sforzo che riaccese le visioni di Jon Spencer interpretando Jimi Hendrix e Led Zeppelin (The Big Three Killed My Baby, Sugar Never Tasted So Good, Jimmy the Exploder). Facendo leva su chitarre atonali e ritmi trash, i White Stripes raggiunsero un senso di intensità ed urgenza che rappresenta davvero l’anima del blues. I White Stripes stanno a Jimi Hendrix come i Royal Trux stanno ai Rolling Stones: riassumono il suono di un’epoca.

De Stijl (Sympathy, 2000), probabilmente il loro disco più efficace, offre abbondanti estratti sonici di blues senza suonare come vero blues (You're Pretty Good Looking, which could be from early Kinks, Let's Build a Home, Hello Operator, I'm Bound to Pack It Up, Apple Blossom).

White Blood Cells (Sympathy, 2001) è altalenante. Da un lato la band risulta ancora in grado di realizzare sorprendenti sintesi di roots-rock e hard-rock (Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Fell in Love with a Girl, I'm Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman, I Can't Wait). D’altro canto la ballata The Same Boy You've Always Known, l’orecchiabile e marziale country-rock Hotel Yorba ed il pop-folk-rock Fell in Love with a Girl segnano una nuova e più convenzionale direzione. Entrambi gli aspetti vengono praticati attraverso una sorta di "entusiasmo distaccato" che pervade i revisionisti dell’anno 2000.E’ un disco che ha troppo il sapore di riempitivo per essere considerato una pietra miliare come molti critici hanno sentenziato. Tuttavia i White Stripes divennero delle superstars da un giorno all’altro.

Sorprendentemente, a seguito del grosso lancio pubblicitario di cui ha beneficiato, la band non ha virato verso sonorità radiofoniche. Elephant (V2, 2003) prosegue nell’intento di fondere Led Zeppelin e John Spencer Blues Explosion con Seven Nation Army, Black Math, The Hardest Button To Button, Girl You Have No Faith in Medicine, In The Cold Cold Night, ma mostra la vera anima del leader con il rhythm'n'blues di sette minuti, Ball and Biscuit, che sembra un tributo alla Chicago degli anni ‘50.

I White Stripes sono arrivati alla loro fase matura con Get Behind Me Satan (V2, 2005), che, a differenza del suo predecessore, non ripete i loro cliches ma semmai li estende in molte direzioni. L’album trae vigore sul terreno indistinto nel quale l’eclettico e il derivato diventano una cosa sola. Sembra, dopo tutto, che ci sia piu’ malinconia e contentezza rispetto agli album precedenti, come se la rabbia giovanile fosse stata lentamente rimpiazzata dalla rassegnazione tipica della mezza eta’. Il sound classico dei White Stripes viene forse preservato al meglio in The Nurse e nel quadretto noir di Take Take Take. L’energica Blue Orchid, il blues avvolgente di Red Rain, la maestosa Forever For Her, le esuberanti distese malinconiche di Little Ghost, e il bizzarro disco-punk di My Doorbell e The Denial Twist utilizzano le stesse impalcature sonore per creare un nuovo tipo di architettura musicale.

Despite living in two cities thousands of kms apart (she in L.A., he in Nashville), the White Stripes resumed their journey with Icky Thump (2007), an album in the old vein (unlike Get Behind Me Satan). The duo unleashed Rag & Bone, a demented Slim Harpo-like barrelhouse shuffle and one of their career's highlights in that genre, the visceral gospel-ish I'm Slowly Turning Into You, Little Cream Soda, that couples panzer-metal rhythm and burning guitar, Icky Thump, that careens ahead with stuttering blues-rock guitar but also the pomp of progressive-rock, Prickly Thorn, a vehement take on folk music, and Catch Hell Blues, boosted by a hell of a detuned guitar squall followed by the most primal of hard-rock riffs, abandoning any pretense of intellectual depth and resigning themselves to be honest revivalists of Sixties garage-rock, and nothing more than that. Monochromatic but at least good at being it.
Jack White's Raconteurs alter-ego helped pen the catchiest and prettiest songs (as in "simplicity pays off"): the somewhat martial You Don't Know What Love Is (ironically, also the album's most memorable song), the oddly Beatles-ian Effect and Cause and the power-ballad A Martyr For My Love For You.
However, the White Stripes still have a knack for embarrassing themselves in the most unlikely manners. Here they do it with a novelty that would make even Queen blush (a Spanish-tinged Conquest that would be more appropriate for a corrida), with the Led Zeppelin-ian bursts of riff in 300 MPH, with the pointless emphasis of Bone Broke.

I Raconteurs sono un side project di Jack White (ora traferitisi a Nashville) e del cantante e autore dei testi Brendan Benson, più il bassista Jack Lawrence e il batterista Patrick Keeler. Il loro album di debutto, Broken Boy Soldiers (Third Man, 2006) spaziava da canzoncine power pop a un hard rock che sapeva di blues (Broken Boy Soldiers, Blue Veins).

Anche se vivevano in due città lontane migliaia di kilometri (lei a Los Angeles, lui a Nashville), gli White Stripes hanno ripreso il loro percorso con Icky Thump (2007), un album nel vecchio spirito (a differenza di Get Behind Me Satan). I due hanno scatenato Catch Hell Blues, Icky Thump, Little Cream Soda e Bone Broke, abbandonando ogni pretesa di profondità intellettuale e rassegnandosi a essere onesti revivalisti del garage rock e blues rock anni Sessanta, e nulla di più.

Monocromatici ma almeno bravi in questo. L’alter-ego dei Raconteurs di Jack White ha aiutato a comporre i pezzi più carini e accattivanti (insomma, la semplicità paga): You Don’t Know What Love Is, I'm Slowly Turning Into You, Rag & Bone.