The Student Playlist

Showcasing the Best New Music, Curating the Classics

“Well It’s True That We Love One Another”: An Introduction to The White Stripes

The White Stripes (1999)

If it’s the pure, distilled essence of The White Stripes that you’re after, look no further than their self-titled debut album. Recorded on a shoestring budget in just a few days, Jack ‘n’ Meg rattle and thrash their way through 17 tracks that are often little more than thumbnail sketches, based around a simple riff and even-simpler beat. The joy of The White Stripes is derived from the fact that pretty much anybody could play these adorably lo-fi songs at home themselves, but nobody could replicate the stylish alchemy and personality that Jack and Meg have here. Few other musicians could wring so much gold from such a limited palette.

A brutally deconstructed version of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Stop Breaking Down’ is one of the highlights, as well as a thrilling mid-album salvo of ‘Cannon’, ‘Astro’, ‘Broken Bricks’ and ‘When I Hear My Name’ that see the Stripes work through a head-bangingly simple idea to its logical conclusion and move on quickly. However, they’re also capable of tender moments on the likes of ‘Do’, ‘Suzy Lee’ and ‘Sugar Never Tasted So Good’.

As their career developed and they added more elements to their music, Jack increasingly regarded the economy of The White Stripes with fondness. “I still feel we’ve never topped our first album,” he said in 2003. “It’s the most raw, the most powerful, and the most Detroit-sounding record we’ve made.” While it shifted little more than a couple of hundred copies at the time, The White Stripes was picked up on by a certain John Peel, and the Stripes’ gradual ascent began. (8/10) (LISTEN)

De Stijl (2000)

Naming their second album after a Dutch art movement of the 1920s, that demanded the reduction of art to the bare essentials of form and colour, was deliciously apt for The White Stripes, a band whose visual palette of red, white and black reflected the self-imposed sonic restrictions they operated under at the start of their career. De Stijl offers a notable evolution of the very basic template laid down on The White Stripes, with a great deal more variety on display – Meg’s drumming was more powerful, and Jack busted out some pretty incredible solos too – but it’s still proudly lo-fi, gritty and passionate.

The improvised middle section of ‘Hello Operator’, following a false-start chorus section that begins with Meg tapping out a rhythm on the rim of her drumkit, is a perfect encapsulation of the subtle inventiveness on display with De Stijl that expanded The White Stripes’ sound. ‘Little Bird’ comes on like a cross between Led Zeppelin and rockabilly, while the introduction of violins on the rambling, ‘I’m Bound To Pack It Up’ are similar moments. The Beatles-y ‘Apple Blossom’, which sees Jack playing the chivalrous gentleman persona he would frequently adopt later, the pretty little ditty of opener ‘You’re Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)’ and the incredibly kinetic cover of Son House’s ‘Death Letter’ are just the very best of what seems like an album of highlights, with only the slightly headachy interlude ‘Jumble, Jumble’ letting the side down.

Yes, De Stijl was a bit derivative, but unlike the vast majority of the pale garage-rock bands that followed in the Stripes’ wake, there’s something definitely progressive about that derivativeness, mixed up as it was with elements of cabaret, bubblegum pop and vaudeville. With their second album, The White Stripes placed themselves in a proud lineage of 20th Century rock’n’roll and blues dating back to well before the pop era, as well as satisfying their arty leanings. Unbelievably, there was even better yet to come… (9/10) (LISTEN)

White Blood Cells (2001)

The Stripes’ third album was the point at which the wider music world, both nationwide in the States and internationally, began to take serious notice of the band – and it all happened very, very quickly for them. Along with their fellow countrymen The Strokes, whose garage rock leant much more towards new-wave and punk, The White Stripes suddenly found themselves being heralded as saviours of guitar music in the summer of 2001. Lucky, then, that the first time the world at large heard the band they had just finished recording their career masterpiece, White Blood Cells, to justify the hype.

Jack and Meg’s blues influences, while still obvious, take more of a back seat in favour of a primitive rock’n’roll sound – as such, it is on White Blood Cells that the Stripes perfected their trademark sound. It’s also an absolutely perfect example of what an underground sensation’s breakthrough album to the mainstream should sound like: a more ambitious and varied take on earlier material to attract new fans, but not so polished as to alienate existing ones.

The album is probably best known for the thrashy garage-rock/blues hybrid of ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’, but the cocky swagger of ‘Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground’ and ‘Offend In Every Way’ show a songwriter in the form of his career, brimming over with confidence and honing the pop leanings demonstrated on De Stijl ever more efficiently. ‘The Union Forever’s lyrics were all taken from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, which Jack has long cited as his favourite film.

The jaunty, fast-paced folk of hit single ‘Hotel Yorba’, the adorable childhood friendship tale of ‘We’re Going To Be Friends’ and ‘Now Mary’, and more insular and self-doubting moments like ‘The Same Boy You’ve Always Known’ and ‘I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman’ show depth and maturity. White Blood Cells was an album stuffed to the gills with idiosyncratic career highlights, the kind that even the greatest artists rarely make more than once in their career, right down to the cute, sub-minute ‘Little Room’ that consisted of a simple lyric and a cymbal smash.

It was also the logical end-point of the direction of travel The White Stripes had begun with their self-titled debut a little over two and a half years before. After this, Jack and Meg would have to think of ever more ingenious ways to broaden their sound, in ways that didn’t always work. Enjoying much bigger success with a major label re-issue in 2002 after its initial release via tiny indie imprint Sympathy For The Record Industry, White Blood Cells is one of the defining guitar albums of the early noughties, but also has a curiously timeless quality that means it has aged incredibly well. (10/10) (LISTEN)

Elephant (2003)

If White Blood Cells was a critical success that earned them the initial exposure and got the music press raving, Elephant saw The White Stripes translated that into hard sales. Their fourth album was the first time that the public at large became acquainted with Jack and Meg White, and the point at which they went from critical darlings to bona-fide rock stars. Surely one of the most profitable rock records of all time, it was recorded for just a couple of thousand pounds in just 10 days in a vintage studio and went on to sell more than four million copies around the world.

The notion of authenticity was explicitly pushed on Elephant, its liner notes stating “No computers were used during the writing, recording, mixing, or mastering of this record”, and with none of the recording equipment more recent than 1963. However, they also expand the boundaries of their sound as far as a rock duo physically can, and it’s this that makes Elephant such a monumental success despite a couple of lesser moments. Take the ‘bass guitar’ sound on the iconic lead single ‘Seven Nation Army’, actually a semi-acoustic guitar dropped down several octaves, and it really doesn’t sound like the work of just two people.

A sweet cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’, both light as a feather and as heavy as lead, the fiercely moody riffing of ‘The Hardest Button To Button’ and the beautifully tender and vulnerable yet subtly dark ‘You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket’ see their dynamic becoming further detached from the strict blues-punk of their origins, taking the sound in some fascinating directions. The lengthy centrepiece ‘Ball And Biscuit’ saw Jack indulging in some proper guitar-god soloing in its elongated middle-eight for the first time in the Stripes’ career. Meg took lead vocals for the first time on the coquette-ish ‘In The Cold, Cold Night’, while Jack had the spotlight on ‘You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket’, showing that the way forward for the band might not always be as a synchronised duo.

Elephant is also great fun to analyse from a psychoanalytical point of view, to scour for clues as to the truth behind the Stripes’ conflicting claims to be either married or siblings (or both, as the doubters had great fun in alleging…). They have great fun self-mythologising on the closer ‘Well It’s True That We Love One Another’, a trio with Holly Golightly. Thematically, Elephant portrays love as a power struggle, with Jack’s chivalry and innocence constantly doing battle with seduction and temptation and not always winning out.

The rather workmanlike thrash of ‘Hypnotize’ and the often excruciating lyrical conceit of ‘There’s No Home For You Here’, where Jack can’t talk to a girl unless he looks at her in a mirror, seem makeweight in comparison to a lot of other tracks, and simply sound like pale retreads of old ideas. However, these did not prevent Elephant from being a stunning commercial triumph and a classic example of what a truly great artist does once given a platform – challenge your audience. The following year, the band won Grammys for Best Alternative Album and Best Rock Song (for ‘Seven Nation Army’). More than ten years later, Elephant is still rightly remembered as one of the crowning achievements of the guitar music scene of the early noughties. (9/10) (LISTEN)

Get Behind Me Satan (2005)

In comparison to the brilliance of their first four efforts, the last two White Stripes albums ultimately scan as comparative failures, albeit supremely fascinating ones. After discovering worldwide fame two years previously, Jack White had produced his idol Loretta Lynn’s new album and worked on the Cold Mountain soundtrack, but all that didn’t really prepare the listener for just how tricky The White Stripes’ fifth album would be. Growing weary of the celebrity status that had been thrust upon him with Elephant, the themes of truth and identity run strongly throughout Get Behind Me Satan, as well as the figure of Rita Hayworth, a kind of spiritual totem for the album who reappears in its lyrics throughout.

After the opening obligatory rock hit single ‘Blue Orchid’, a rather perfunctory copy of ‘Seven Nation Army’ with its false ‘bass’ sound, Jack and Meg proceed to second-guess the listener at every turn. Suggesting several possible futures for the band, Get Behind Me Satan feels like a sampler for three different records. Not all of them work, but they’re usually intriguing to follow down the various paths they choose.

First, the good parts: the maddeningly catchy single ‘My Doorbell’ sees the band work with pianos properly for the first time. The delicate, restrained ‘Red Rain’, decorated by bells, and the moody marimba experiments of ‘The Nurse’ and ‘Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)’, are totally off the grid in terms of expectations for how the group should sound. The gleefully kitschy, ukulele-driven ‘Little Ghost’ is by far the happiest moment in quite a downcast record.

Get Behind Me Satan certainly doesn’t want for ideas, but their execution too often sounds very laboured. The record’s third single ‘The Denial Twist’ was an odd choice, as it was virtually the same riff and feel as ‘My Doorbell’. The album then proceeds to sag dreadfully in the middle, with ‘White Moon’ and ‘Instinct Blues’ both lacking spark. ‘Take, Take, Take’, with its studio trickery in making Jack’s voice flit between the right and left speakers, should be the thematic centrepiece of the record, telling a story of a crazed fan meeting the aforementioned Ms. Hayworth, but it just ends up as annoying.

When their career ended, Get Behind Me Satan was arguably the least loved of The White Stripes’ albums, but more than ten years later it remains one of their most interesting to revisit. (6/10) (LISTEN)

Icky Thump (2007)

In the two years before the White Stripes’ sixth album, an awful lot changed in Jack White’s world. He had moved to Nashville from his native Detroit, gotten married and become a father, but he had also formed the hugely well-received side-project The Raconteurs, which was so successful that many speculated that it would spell the end for The White Stripes, or at least see them veer off in a very different musical direction. Ultimately, this was groundless as Icky Thump turned out to be unmistakably ‘a White Stripes record’, albeit with many more added elements to expand their classic sound.

Icky Thump is essentially a slightly more focussed and disciplined version of the kind of experimentation that characterised Get Behind Me Satan, with more effort made to contain those tendencies within the old-fashioned White Stripes template. The ominous Zeppelin-esque thump of the opening title track (and lead single) that saw White spitting out his lyrics almost like a rapper, and the savage ‘Bone Broke’ which dated back to 1998, were the most immediately satisfying moments.

‘300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues’, which goes from atmospheric silence to gales of squalling guitar, the grinding spoken-word moments of ‘Little Cream Soda’, and the mariachi-band flavours of the spectacularly dramatic war-of-the-sexes ‘Conquest’, were highly successful attempts at experimentation. The compelling ‘Rag And Bone’, which casts Jack and Meg as thrifty garbage-pickers making useful things out of discarded household tat, repeats an idea that plugs right back into the origin myth of The White Stripes themselves – being inventive within a very restrictive and self-imposed template.

The hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes on ‘Pricky Thorn, But Sweetly Worn’ and the following ‘St. Andrews (This Battle Is In The Air)’ are Jack’s tribute to his Scottish ancestry, but fall into the ‘interesting failure’ category. The same goes for the noodling ‘Catch Hell Blues’, but ‘I’m Slowly Turning Into You’ and ‘A Martyr For My Love For You’ merely represent a little bit of a drop off in quality in what is otherwise a highly entertaining and ambitious record for The White Stripes.

Sadly, Icky Thump would turn out to be the swansong for one of the most important bands of the noughties. At least it was a fitting finale. (7/10) (LISTEN)

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