White Stripes: Icky Thump

I'm desperately fighting the urge to use my write-up/review/rambling thingy on The White Stripes' (apparent) final album to sum up my thoughts on their career as a group, but I can't really bring myself to do that. Mainly, of course, that's because that's not what I do here. Here, we talk about music more than musicians, and while there's always plenty of overlap, you can get the verdict on Jack and Meg's place in the history books plenty of other places. Me, I just like clicking "play."

There's such an air of bullshit surrounding the critical discourse of the band: from their brother/sister persona, Jack's retro tastes and their stripped-down sound, every review I read barely seems capable of approaching the music on the level of "something you listen to." And I get it, the band is fertile ground for meta-commentary, but if you're thinking too hard about it, you're not really doing your job (unless you're actually my ole Pop Music Professor, Josh Pilzer) and you're kinda missing out.

In re-listening to Icky Thump, I felt a mixture of sadness and contentment. Sadly, the band that recorded this CD had called it quits. Happily, this was the one to go out on. It's an unlikely choice for "consensus best Stripes album," but I think it's the one we can mostly agree on. White Blood Cells has (as do its predecessors) the potential of being an overrated indie darling, Elephant could be considered a problematic follow-up, and Get Behind Me Satan wears its oddness proudly. Any of those albums might be better, but Icky Thump? Icky Thump, I think, is the record everyone was waiting for the band to record. On it, Jack breaks his own rules (what with all the keyboards and organs and bagpipes and trumpets mingling with the guitars) writes several crash-and-bang rockers, a strong ballad or two, and just generally seems to be having a ball. Meg's there too, I think. Yet despite this obviously embellished sound, it never seems to violate Stripes "canon," and the songs foreground all the appropriate elements to feel familiar but fresh.

The album starts with probably their most potent opening salvo ever: four great tracks, all with their own unique qualities. The title track (a White Stripes first!) is that rare outwardly-political statement from a man who felt more at home stumping for Charles Foster Kane than any current candidate. It thumps ominously into being, militaristically while Jack yowls his frantic lyrics, which tie together in that cool postmodern Becklike way all the kids are imitating these days. Depending on your sympathies, you may not care for "White Americans, what? nothing better to do / Why don't ya kick yourselves out, you're an immigrant too!" but who can argue with "Who's using who / What should we do? / Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too!" which kind of adds to my earlier point that Jack is just a little bit of an MC, (like many great rockers though few would want to admit it.) The song manages to simulate boiling fury with an unholy keyboard solo that sounds like an angry mob clawing at the walls. It seems to be button mashing, but it illustrates the point quite well. Merging with that powerhouse riff is Meg, who is spot-on throughout the album.

If the thunder and lightning of the title track seems to spell doom, the next song is misleadingly welcoming in its sound. With one of the most radio-friendly hooks Jack White ever laid out and the most conventional structure (this album seems to be more built around verse-chorus-solo structure than others.) The song in question is the Earth-shatteringly wicked "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" which follows its easy, exhilarating riff with more accusatory lyrics: "n some respects I suspect you've got a respectable side / When pushed and pulled and pressured, you seldom run and hide / But it's for someone else's benefit, not what yoy want to do..." and though the most direct (and undeniably correct) interpretation of this song is that it's a call for people (probably women) to take control of their romantic lives, it also hits on notions of identity and self-determination that underline this album. Here, we get some real sonic power. Jack White had been "cheating" his "stripped-down" sound for years, overdubbing here and there, notably on the previous albums where marimbas were fleshed out with pianos, but this album is the one that's most overt about it. "You Don't Know What Love Is" wouldn't have the same effect, probably, if the guitars weren't doubled up and underlined with organs. But it remains fairly straightforward and the extra tracks are used as punctuation, not as separate strains. Thank goodness, because Jack already alternates so much between bluntness and dexterity on his guitar that if I had to keep track of him doing it twice at once, my head would explode.

This is followed by "300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues." I don't know if "outpour" means rain, but it definitely sounds to me like someone driving down the lonely highway in a rainstorm. The guitar twangs just so in the verses and screeches in the solo. Screechy guitars all over this album. Screechy everything. Sometimes it seems like it's about to pull itself apart, but then it feels even more well-put-together. "300 M.P.H." has that great ragged world-weary sound it seems you can only get after you've been on the road for years and you feel like you've seen it all by now. The opening streak is wrapped up with "Conquest," an intriguing cover-choice about male and female desires (and stereotypes) and grown-ass relationships. It's fleshed out with a flurry of horns that adds menace and fanfare as they battle it out with the guitars.

The album doesn't revel in its stylistic trips like Elephant or Satan (which made a whole unit out of disruption) but they're there and when they crop up between relatively straightforward rock, it's pretty startling. These would be "Conquest" (if the horns are weird to you,) "Prickly Thorn But Sweetly Worn" and its psychedelic twin "St. Andrew (This Battle Is In The Air)" and the junk collector blues of "Rag and Bone." That song's mostly been picked over for its metaphor as an explanation of the Stripes' "scrapheap" aesthetic MO, but I don't know how many times I listened to the song before that even occurred to me. Or maybe it had to be explained. All I really knew about the song until then was that it was the main source of vocal Meg on the album but the metaphor is definitely useful as a way of looking at the band's music. I think the point might be less that they pick up other peoples' detritus than that they could make music out of anything they wanted; like old radio monologues and Citizen Kane dialogue, using bagpipes and horns as they so desire. I don't think, never have thought and get annoyed when other people insist, it's about where they got it from more than what they do with it.

"Prickly Thorn" seems to look backward to the rolling hills of Scotland for comfort and a sense of stability. That "Lie-de-lie-de-lie-oh" refrain is something else, brother. That song earns its spot on the otherwise stable record, but I've never really been certain what to make of "St. Andrew." It's weird, but to what value? Is it pleasant to listen to? Does it seem especially deep to somebody? I don't know. I skip it.

Other parts of the album are perfectly normal, in fact more normal-sounding than most of the other Stripes' album cuts, without losing much distinctness. So if they're bland, they're bland on their own terms, which usually keeps them pretty good. "Bone Broke" goes off the rails like a more polished "Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine," "Little Cream Soda" is effective in its bitter nostalgia, and "Catch Hell Blues" is one of the more interesting modern-blues workouts Jack's gotten on tape, ahead of "Ball & Biscuit" and "Insinct Blues."

But consider three of the four last songs on the album. "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" brings more multitracking in to let the organ peel over the guitars while the vocals are brought to the level of a sermon about retaining individuality, and "A Martyr For Me Love For You," a hard-to-define sorta-bluesy, sorta-rocky sorta-ballad that will have your head bobbing while your face is frozen somberly. I dig the lyrics to the chorus, which bring back that streak of self-immolation that manifested all over the previous three albums. There are two ways to play the blues, I think: with complete confidence or completely broken, and I think Jack's better at the latter. "I could tell a joke / but one of these days I'm bound to choke" he says with uncertain certainty.

But what's more about these great songs is that there are different ways you can read them, like many of the best songs in the group's book. "Slowly Turning Into You" is about retaining one's identity, it could very well mean as a musician rather than as a relationship: referring to the way artists might conform to others' expectations about who they are and what they're supposed to represent (a definite possibility for Mr. White,) and about how the influence of contemporaries and critics is sometimes unavoidable, even when it's undesirable. It's not always easy to "keep your little shell intact." And knowing turned out to be the last album under the White Stripes name, maybe we could see "Martyr For My Love For You" as valediction in case Jack never again managed to hit the heights with his other projects. It is, after all, about giving up a good thing so as to not ruin it.

It all ends with "Effect and Cause," one of the most lyric-smart songs Jack cooked up, a country rocker that warns us not to confuse an end result with its beginnings. The song is one of my favourites to listen to not only for the smartass lyrical content but because it has so much fun complicating this breakup scene it presents. Great send-off, and again, potential for meta-commentary: maybe Jack's telling us not to read too much into this notion of "influences," or maybe he's just singing about a girl acting crazy after a breakup.

Previous White Stripes albums laid their production bare. Simplistically, it always seemed to be "guitar or piano and drums" even when it wasn't literally. You always seemed to be able to pick out each of the elements and let them work on you. Icky Thump is the most self-effacing one of the bunch: unusual in the way it strives not to be so unusual. It's not just because there seems to be more instrumental tracks per song, but because it sheds the overt stylistic risks of all its predecessors: without feeling like he owes it to himself to go all-out to flesh out the "stripped-down" tracks, Jack wrote a bunch of straightforward, enjoyable songs that for the most part don't go out of their way to be weird, and even the weird ones work just because they work.

Give them some credit for being good at what they do. The instruments are all in there to hear when they're needed, and the songs are a great framework for their sound. Simplicity is really just about finding the easiest (and/or most enjoyable) way of saying something more complicated than it should be, getting a direct route to the source of an idea or feeling. That's why their early songs about heartbreak and childhood friends were so charming, but as time went on, their interests changed and so did their methods. So even with all the extra bits, this is one of the simpler albums, and therefore the one with the most appeal. And amidst all this, they don't sound at all unlike themselves: never complacent, never compromising. If all the songs aren't deeply personal, it's because they don't need to be because the surface is musical enough. So much of a band is image anyway, at least they're honest about it.

When Icky Thump was released, the 20-something garage rocker that recorded White Blood Cells was now in his thirties and one of the biggest guitar superstars of his generation. Someone at that standing can't really afford to be worried that he'll "Offend in Every Way." Since this might be the last occasion I get to discuss the matter, I might as well mention I think the band's place in the history books is secured: not because they went out of their way to make major albums, but because they made a bunch of albums that ended up being major anyway. Whether you think he's a man ruled by his influences and his peculiar tastes, or an originator in his own right, I think Jack White always demonstrated through his White Stripes albums that he wasn't content just to do as he was told.





...oh, shit, I just did that thing I said I wasn't gonna do. Oh well, here's videos.

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