One of the
more unlikely success stories of recent years, The White Stripes
are a band who've managed to do things strictly on their own
terms. Through four albums of raw garage blues, shot through
with an inherent ear for melodic pop, Jack and Meg have risen
from lo-fi garage band to million selling pop stars without
once compromising their vision. GET BEHIND ME SATAN,
their fifth album finds them as global stars, yet making a
record that at times well and truly messes with their winning
formula completely.
Opening in regular White Stripes territory, BLUE ORCHID,
is all concise buzzsaw guitar riffs and choppy drum hits.
Taking the formula they've perfected over four previous albums,
although played here heavier and faster - this is short, sharp
and vicious - with Jack spitting out lines like "you
got a reaction/you got a reaction didn't you/you took a white
orchid/you took a white orchid and turned it blue" and
"how dare you/how are you now anyway?" with a bile
usually hidden behind his Southern gentleman persona.
Anyone expecting the usual albums worth of guitar heavy blues
rock, should probably get ready for some serious double-taking
from this point on. THE NURSE, is a gentle
lullaby riding along on a hypnotic marimba rhythm that save
for the occasional inter cutting of violent cymbal crashes
and random guitar noise pretty much corrupts every preconception
you've ever held about The White Stripes up to this point.
The fact that the piano replaces the guitar for the majority
of songs here doesn't detract from the fact that this is an
album still dictated by the quality of songs it holds.
The impossibly insistent, MY DOORBELL, is
a song catchier than a case of SARS with one of those hooks
that gets tangled in your head right from the word go and
looks set to stay lodged well into old age. A direct relation
to Hotel Yorba, this is the kind of song that'll have the
remaining Beatles sitting around wondering why they didn't
come up with it, and if this doesn't appear clogging up every
radio playlist and ringtone chart the world over within the
next couple of months then you know something is seriously
wrong.
While, FOREVER FOR HER (IS OVER FOR ME),
represents more in the way of The White Stripes spreading
their musical wings it also somehow highlights a certain narrowness
in their overall sound. Bearing a creeping sense of songwriting
deja vu, there's an over familiarity at work here that manifests
itself in a by-the-numbers song structure and Jack Whites
turn of a melodic phrase, a trick that's been heard just that
few times too many by now and is starting to feel a tad stale,
something also apparent on THE DENIAL TWIST a song sounding like a leftover from sessions for Elephant
or White Blood Cells.
Proving he does have a sense of humour amidst the dark posturing, LITTLE GHOST, is a blues-grass front porch
stomp, full of fiddles, acoustic guitars and lyrics like "the
first moment that I met her/I did not expect a spectre/when
I shook her hand/I really shook a glove", while the more
sombre, WHITE MOON, finds sparse piano chords ring out against
simple drum beats and Jacks familiar blues howl.
A return to the blistering guitar work outs that defined Elephant, INSTINCT BLUES, finds Jack White riffing
like Jimmy Page meets Jimi Hendrix and singing in a vocal
style that takes him closer to prime Robert Plant - a combination
resulting in a sound that wouldn't sound out of place on Led
Zeppelin II.
TAKE, TAKE, TAKE, another piano led song,
is also one with enough twists and turns to suggest this is
a band not yet content to stay complacent and settled. Like
The Who reinterpreted by Cole Porter, minimal drum stabs are
peppered by bluesy piano chords while Jack weaves his storytelling
lyricism with a wiry combination of Bob Dylan and Iggy Pop.
A record of contradictions at times, GET BEHIND ME
SATAN, finds The White Stripes at turns sounding
as streamlined and modern as the next pro-tooled up band -
like on BLUE ORCHID, while the next moment
on a song like RED RAIN, sounding as if they're
Led Zeppelin resurrected before turning into a 1940s gospel
revue on I'M LONELY (BUT I AIN'T THAT LONELY YET).
At times, at their most coherent and focused and at others
their most disjointed and ragged, and others still as if their
doing by-the-numbers parodies, this is an album that revels
in its sense of unpredictability and shifting styles, and
its a factor that marks out The White Stripes as a band willing
to take risks and try new avenues at this stage in their career
- something that's gloriously refreshing in an age where bands
take three to five years perfecting albums, only to end up
playing it safe and bland, coasting on past glories.
GET BEHIND ME SATAN, represents a shift in
the bands sound but at its core this is the same melting pot
of classic twisted blues, with a garage rock edge. Written
and recorded over two weeks, this is a record that sounds
raw and alive - something that's unfortunately missing in
most other bands of their status and size. This could either
be a glorious swan song to the bands career or an exciting
new beginning, either way this is a record that for what it
may lack in overall coherence more than makes up for in vision,
style and determination.
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