Music Review: The White Stripes - Icky Thump
It seems like just yesterday we were bobbing and swaying to the stupidly catchy "Fell In Love With A Girl" from The Stripes' 2001 breakthrough release White Blood Cells, but this year's Icky Thump marks their sixth full-length effort. Historically, the sixth studio album has been a branding iron of sorts for important bands: The Beatles' Rubber Soul, Led Zeppelin's Houses of The Holy, The Who's Quadrophenia, and Pink Floyd's Meddle. All those LPs marked either a turning point or a reaffirming of greatness - for The White Stripes, Icky Thump is a combination of the two. Get Behind Me Satan clearly delineated an upward trend in popularity and production value for them and Icky Thump continues that increasing slope. The turning point though is that The White Stripes have finally nailed down a sound that distinctly merges the dirty character of their Garage Rock roots with the expansive ambition of their newfound dabbling in Psychedelia.
This balance could be attributed to Jack and his vintage recording gear fetish. A noted analog freak, White's sound is as rare and sought after as the tape reels he archives it on. Really, he's just keeping a tradition alive: Producers in the 70s would place tape over the VU Meters while recording. The hope was that this would ensure the loudest and most aggressive sound without the visual stigma of seeing the meter constantly peaking in the forbidden red regions. I imagine that when Jack White prepared for tracking and mixing Icky Thump, that's the first thing he did.
The Psychedelic half of the equation finds its roost in the title track. A roaring organ riff (which Jack never plays the same way twice at their shows) recalls the splendor of the late 60s acid voyages undertaken by The Doors. They never take themselves too seriously though - "Rag and Bone" is a gurgling guitar jam where you can envision Jack & Meg scrounging for yard sale items in Detroit garages like the one that spawned their 2-piece sound assault.
Of course, The Stripes continue to don the trademark black, white, and red. Gimmick or not, it's still serving them well. Imagine Icky Thump as an updated Spaghetti Western, where everything is in grainy black and white and the only color present is the crimson blood spilled in the gunfights. The red drops on the dusty ground, in this case, are songs like the mariachi trumpet coated "Conquest" (remake of a 1952 Patti Page song), the crazed hammond mashing of "Slowly Turning Into You", and the train wreck, acoustic rambling closer "Effect & Cause". Icky Thump will leave fans feeling like they were slow to the trigger and shot right through the heart with the surprisingly hot, bluesy bullet of Jack White's pistol.
What say you?!