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 performed 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
(especially 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.
The Raconteurs are a side project by Jack White (now relocated to Nashville) and singer songwriter
Brendan Benson
plus bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler.
Their debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers (Third Man, 2006), ran the gamut
from power-pop ditties
(Steady As She Goes)
to bluesy hard-rock
(Broken Boy Soldiers and especially Blue Veins, the standout).
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 alter-ego Raconteurs 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.
Jack White's project Raconteurs packed another set of retro-songs on
Consolers Of The Lonely (Warner Bros, 2008), shabby deconstructions of
stereotypes of
acid rock, blues-rock, power-pop, etc, with the usual Led Zeppelin fixation
(Salute Your Solution). But perhaps the best combination of nostalgic
music and contemporary topics is to be found in the least typical number,
the melodrama Carolina Drama.
Jack White also formed Dead Weather, a
supergroup fronted by Alison Mosshart of the Kills that released
Horehound (Third Man, 2009), with Hang You From the Heavens and
the explosive rap-reggae-metal anthem of
I Cut Like a Buffalo
(an organ-led hybrid of
Tackhead,
Cream and
Free),
and Sea Of Cowards (Third Man, 2010), highlighted by the
gruesome booming riff of Blue Blood Blues,
the vulgar rigmarole of Hustle and Cuss,
and the unbalanced driving blues-metal of Die by the Drop.
Jack White's solo Blunderbuss (Third Man, 2012), for which he employed not Meg White
but other female musicians
(drummer Carla Azar of Autolux and guitarist Olivia Deen),
presented an old-fashioned rocker that had blissfully missed the punk
revolution and the new wave and had been catapulted straight into the 21st
century from the happy Sixties.
Highlights include the
virulent syncopated Freedom at 21,
the catchy barrelhouse blues-rock Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy with rollicking piano,
the gospel-ish Love Interruption,
the Led Zeppelin-ian singalong of Missing Pieces and
granitic rap-metal of
Sixteen Saltines (with an earth-shaking riff).
There is little here (riff, hook, rhythm, pause, shout) that hasn't be heard before (dozens of times) in the annals of rock music.
It is difficult not to feel that this is just a streamlined version of White Stripes.
Jack White continued his solo career with
Lazaretto (2014), that contains the gritty blues-rock
instrumental High Ball Stepper and the catchy
Lazaretto.
Four year later, Boarding House Reach (2018) was an insane
hodgepodge of electronic noise,
folk (Ezmerelda Steals the Show,
Get in the Mind Shaft),
garage-rock, jazz, funk, hip-hop (Humoresque),
trip-hop, country
(What's Done Is Done) and blues
(Over and Over and Over,
Why Walk a Dog?), all played as if in a psychedelic trance.
Highlights are the dissonant electronic blues-rock of Respect Commander,
the psychotic, tribal, funk-jazz jam Corporation,
the funk-punk orgy of Hypermisophoniac and
the fiery gospel-ish Connected by Love.
Another four years and White dished out
the wild, loud and fast Fear of the Dawn (2022), that contains
the abrasive and bombastic, but also catchy, blues-rock ditty Taking Me Back,
the pounding and anthemic, Stooges-esque, Fear of the Dawn,
the shrapnel funk-rock of The White Raven,
the cute funky novelty Hi-De-Ho, a collaboration with rapper Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest,
the surrealistic and danceable vignette of Into the Twilight,
the furious rap-metal of What's the Trick?,
the rockabilly That Was Then This is Now,
all derailed by delirious sound effects.
Not quite as creative and consistent as Boarding House Reach, but still a worthy successor.
Its folk-ish, acoustic, intimate companion Entering Heaven Alive (2022) is a very minor album, despite the lyrical Love Is Selfish and the
Richard Thompson-esque
A Madman From Manhattan.
