Get Behind Me, Hyperbole
Tuesday 06/07/2005 9:44 PM
 Jack White. Meg White. The White Stripes. Photo by Patrick Keeler. File Under: Music; Someone Else's Image; White Stripes, The |
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So this evening I drive over to Best Buy to pick up the new White Stripes CD. Sheriff is chilling in the backseat and we're just having a good time enjoying the sun in the still solar summer evening.
I walk out of Best Buy with my CD and the black and tan looks pretty hot, even though the windows are down and I wasn't in there long. I stop at the drugstore for Candy and then we're headed home.
Just as I pull into the carport, NPR is running a review of Get Behind Me, Satan.
Your Link of the Day is the streaming audio feed of the review with some music excerpts as well. While it's too early for me to tell you whether or not I agree with what Tom Moon had to say, I liked the ideas and phraseology in his review enough that I want to share it with you. Since I suspect some/most of you won't trouble with the audio link, here is a transcription:
The band is a little different. First of all, there are just two members: guitarist Jack White and drummer Meg White (they used to be married). They're obsessed with vintage gear and pre-computer age recording techniques, and they focus on immediacy. The first single from their new album was released just two weeks after it was finished.
The White Stripes new CD is called Get Behind Me Satan. Our critic Tom Moon says it has some surprises....
Some rock bands find a successful sound and work it forever. Some experiment constantly, confounding their fans. The White Stripes want it both ways.
On the new disc Get Behind Me Satan, there are several doses of the slightly deranged blues rock that made the duo famous. The single "Blue Orchid" is one of only three songs built around The White Stripes most identifiable sound: Jack White's barbed wire electric guitar. The guitar songs on this disc are little miracles of ad libbed invention — the kind that might have been written in five minutes. You've heard these rhythm riffs a zillion times before, but not played this way. The guitar crunch is so abrasive you feel it before you even hear it.
And thats just part of the story. Jack White wrote the other ten songs on piano — or marimba of all things. These send The White Stripes into a whole other dimension. Compared with the bone rattling beats of the last album, Elephant, this is practically parlor music, but from a spooky parlor cluttered with random rock artifacts and haunted by little ghosts.
Even if that Jack White whine gets on your nerves, you have to admire his ambition. He could have just re-written the 2003 breakthrough single, "Seven Nation Army." Instead, his new songs tear off in truly unexpected directions.
They call the disc Get Behind Me Satan, but there are times you can't help wondering if the devil is riding shotgun.
Of course, this is all copyright, blah, blah, blah by Tom Moon, NPR, Philadelphia Enquirer and whoever else may or may not have a piece of it.
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