| ·Recorded for a meagre sum, Elephant may soon prove itself the most financially successful album ever made. Thank goodness it’s as good as it is.
Despite Elephant’s heaps of pre-release hype promising strange new directions and mind-blowing innovations within the constraints of rock and roll, The White Stripes remain a strange musical anomaly – unlike most other groups, we want them to sound exactly the same as they always have. Thankfully, moments into "Seven Nation Army," amid Jack White’s shouts of "goin’ to Wichita" and "bleedin’ before the lord," it’s obvious that Elephant is business as usual, still as straightforward as primary mathematics and catchy as fuck.
The White Stripes don’t simply wear their influences on their sleeves; they borrow and steal like the wisest musical bandits since the Kinks. "Girl You Have No Faith In Medicine" hops up Urge Overkill’s "Positive Bleeding," injecting it with life thanks to Jack’s mad preacher yelps. "Ball and Biscuit," one of the album’s several highlights, sees the Stripes tossing in their best Hendrix shakedown moves. The inclusion of a straight-ahead cover of "I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself" can easily be taken as an unflustered admission that the Stripes are happily raiding past grooves.
Heck, they’re even starting to rip themselves off – there’s the token acoustic intermission of "You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket," while "There’s No Home For You Here" unashamedly uses the same chord progression as "Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" (from White Blood Cells), spruced up with vocals multi-tracked into a choir. Still, who else has this much personality and energy? The Hives may be more attractive and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs somewhat edgier, but no one can touch The White Stripes for shameless entertainment value and staying power.
Meg White even steps towards the mic on "Cold Cold Night" (her slight British inflection calling to mind Nancy Sinatra and more than a dash of Petula Clark), proving The White Stripes aren’t strictly Jack’s show. Best of all, though, is the self-referencing closer "It’s True That We Love One Another," Jack and Meg alternately singing in duet with U.K. garage rocker Holly Golightly, all chatting on a first-name basis. Given the "are they siblings or husband and wife?" whispers surrounding the Whites themselves, the song’s mock romance between Jack and Holly works as a fitting monkey wrench tossed into the ongoing White Stripes enigma. That it’s undoubtedly the sweetest ’60s throwback tune the Stripes have ever recorded doesn’t hurt much either.
So then, Elephant is no radical departure for The White Stripes at all – and that’s meant as a double-fisted compliment shouted from the rooftops. Take your laptops and shove ’em – rock and roll has been saved once more.
|
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.