Album Review: White Stripes – Icky Thump

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White Stripes – Icky Thump

The Detroit garage blues duo is back. Jack’s minutely diverse hiatus with Midwestern buddies the Racontours has seemingly breathed fresh life into the ever experimental White Stripes. The marimbas and pianos may have gone but either ‘Willie the caretaker’ has forced a threesome or Mr. White has simply decided that bagpipes should feature heavily on a couple of tracks. Namely ‘Prickly thorn, but sweetly worn’ followed by ‘St Andrew (This battle is in the air)’ where mythical sister (and recent porn star to those with Internet savvy) takes over vocal duties. But like a Polish immigrant it works. Speaking of immigrants the album title and opening track ‘Icky Thump’ revolves around that issue although it’s the addictive guitar riff that speaks louder than his lyrics.
It’s the bands 6th studio album yet it’s still hard to tire of the couplets red, white and black uniform. Maybe because there are signs that they’ve redirected themselves back towards the heavier sound of the early days or maybe it’s just their ability to consistently conjure a weirdly appealing aura that requires you explore more? The songs are so varied that everyone’s stand out track will be different and probably keep changing with each listen. For the time being however mine is ‘Conquest’ , an anti-sexist 50’s cover of Patti Page where Jacks larynx duels with a Mexican trumpeter around lyrics such as ‘now you know who made the conquest/she with all her female guile/led him helplessly down the aisle’. For those of you interested I’d call the musical stand off an entertaining dead heat by the way. Single ‘you don’t know what love is’ also possesses a feministic theme amid a ‘Lockness monster’ of a riff (sorry I must still have bagpipes in my head). It’s the bands loudest album to date with Jacks guitar playfully teasing you with jabs before visciously launching into a thunderous assault of hooks, uppercuts and rabbit punches. ‘Catch hell blues’ is anything but lyrical genius but guitar and antique foot pedal take you on a journey that Michael Palin would have been proud of. At times it all sounds similar to sometimes heroes Led Zepp and Jack even gets close to Plants mesmerizing wail. Although I don’t ever recall a Led Zeppelin song that was seemingly about going into a house and wanting possession of everything including the toilet seat like in the banter filled ‘Rag and Bone’. The album does have its quieter moments with ‘Little cream soda’ and cleverly allows your ears to come down slowly with closing track ‘effect and cause’.
Maybe a side project and venture into porn was all the band needed? Jack appears revitalized, and Meg’s skin is glowing from her taped sexual escapade. Sure maybe she would have been wise to have invested time in her drumming skills and maybe taken her grade two test but her lack of talent in that departure is substituted for a chemistry and dynamic only these two can produce. In terms of recording time 3 weeks was a sweaty marathon compared with usual standards but the outcome is their best work since ‘White blood cells’ launched them into the musical elite.

Written by Simon for UKEvents.net