Atomictumor

The White Stripes.

Damn, its good to be enjoying a new White Stripes record again.

See, they started out with a theme. They had the red and white thing going on, with the peppermint, and the cutesy songs about childhood romances mixed in with the bluesy songs that they do so well, and it was a good thing.

Then they started getting popular, and their third album, White Blood Cells, reflected the unease with being in the spotlight, these weird two kids from Detroit, who up till then played classroom sized joints, to a fanatical local audience of maybe 100 or so. They weren’t into getting popular, way I see it, they were into playing little rock and roll shows, just the two of them. Eventually, the crowd got so large that they couldn’t hear the music at all.

The fourth record, Elephant, introduced the color black into their wardrobe, with the theme “Death of the Sweetheart”. I pondered that a lot, as GAC and I were a little late on the White Stripes bus, and got on with everybody else when they got popular. Sigh. I’m a johhny-come-lately, I know.

Elephant, instead of having the songs about childhood, seemed to be coming more from the adolescent, pain of rejection point of view, instead of the younger, excitement-at-getting-to-know-you one. It was cocky, it swaggered, it preened, it stared you down. It was still a little playful, but you got the feeling that there was a sock stuffed with sand in its back pocket, and if you turned your head you’d get whacked with it.

We saw them at the end of that tour at the Agora Theater in Cleveland, OH, with Whirlwind Heat playing an amazing show opening up for them, but when the White Stripes seemed just worn down. The show was great, but it was evident that they weren’t wanting to be there. Hell, I couldn’t blame em. They’d been touring endlessly for something like 2 years, Meg (I found out later) had the flu for a month, and the end was in sight. When Jack said something like “This will be the last time you’ll be seeing us for quite a while, Cleveland”, I believed him.

He was wearing black and red that night, none of the childhood kinda joy that the Stripes brought into their earlier sets that we’d seen video of.

Two years later or so, they came up with Get Behind Me, Satan, which almost didn’t sound like a White Stripes record, but a ‘Jack White sick of being Jack White’ record. The songs were dark, about death, about being smothered, about being denied. The videos and album images didn’t have much hint of the red and white at all, the production stepped away from the stripped down, 4 track sound of Elephant, and they never put it out on vinyl, like they did for all of the others. I think that was a conscious decision, that they wanted to say “This isn’t a White Stripes record”.

Maybe I look too deeply into it.

However, I got in the mail the other day, my very own vinyl copy of Icky Thump, their latest record. I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve had it on CD for weeks, but had to get it on vinyl, because man, the White Stripes are back. Its good. I mentioned it some in the truncated weekend update of the Bonnaroo post, that they were back in the red and whites, but apparently since then they’ve gone on to play classrooms and school busses in offbeat places in Canada, trying to find that small crowd of 100 or so again, smiling.

More power to em. The new record, while it still doesn’t have the childhood joy of songs like “We Are Going To Be Friends” or “Apple Blossom” (GAC’s favorite song, one I would sing to her), but has an impish quality, an energy similar to that found in those previous records. Its a great thing.

Its wonderful to find things that you expected to be gone, to instead be thriving. Thanks for that, White Stripes. You made the summer of 2007 a lot better.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.