Their music always had an avant-garde twist that couldn’t be ignored, which no doubt helped to draw people to them. The stories they circulated about their background, as brother and sister instead of (ex-)husband and wife, gave them an air of mystery furthered by Jack’s strange songwriting. No doubt they drew some listeners who only puzzled over what, if anything, it all meant.
With Jack’s emphasis on musical authenticity, surely the motivation behind his fanatically anti-technology approach to music recording, being a cult hit seemed a comfortable place for the band. That came to end with their 2003 release Elephant which vaulted the duo into the attention of the mainstream. The album showcased a rough, full sound centered around Jack’s rabid, ribald guitar playing hung on Meg’s dead-set drumming. They had the loud garage-rock sound that pummeled the listener, but stayed rooted in the blues – going so far to cover jack’s favorite performer Son House. Elephant was the pinnacle of the White Stripes sound, matured over four albums, and launched the band to the heights of critical acclaim.
Things were never the same after that. 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan was a terrifically accomplished album, breaking new ground for the band and challenging listeners with a complex new sound for the band. But the sound that had first brought them so much attention was gone, as if they had taken what they’d created as far as it could go. As excellent and imaginative as Satan was, it was nearly impossible to ignore how different it was from what came before it.
Their last album, Icky Thump (2007) which more and more seems like a fitting finale, had some of the hard sound of their earlier albums. Calling it a return to form is unfair, since it was truly a well made album that stands on its own merits. It even hearkened back to their early garage days with Jack’s guitar back on center stage and included a recording of a previously live-only track the band had used for years. The band seemed to have merged the puzzling artistry of Satan with the sound that first made them famous. But that came with a slickness of production and an approach that felt more like Jack’s then-sideproject The Raconteurs. “They used to sound like Led Zeppelin through a tin can,” my friend Matt told me at the time. “Now they just sound like Led Zeppelin.”
This was shocking at the time, considering Matt was a former musician and a White Stripes fan to boot. I didn’t get a chance to ask him any more about it until years later, in the summer of 2010. We were walking through the pines and moss along the sides of a mountain in Washington state, and I asked him what he thought of the band looking back at their career up to that point. He seemed cagey at first, almost embarrassed. Like when someone brings up something from your childhood. He hemmed and hawed for a while, but finally said, “I think the most amazing part of their story is that for a little while, everyone decided to love the music of these two weird kids from Detroit.”
And we did. And now that music is ours, and we can do with it whatever we want. For now, I’ll have to be selfish and mourn the end of the wild sound they brought.
2 Responses
Lovely. One of the all time “great” bands. At least, in my opinion.
good synopsis, but i think you overlook ‘white blood cells’ in a historical context. it was released in the same breath as the strokes first album and really ushered in a change to the musical landscape from cheese ball arena rock (Limp Biscuit, et al) to more substantive rock ‘n roll. ‘fell in love with a girl’ is arguably a later generation ‘smells like teen spirit’.