The White Stripes: Icky Thump

By: Kayceman

One day, decades from now, when all the dust has settled and the scorecards have been tallied, Jack White will be left standing. When future music dorks look back at this time and place to make decisions about who is The Man, there will be others, but Jack White may very well be The One. To rock this fucking hard but also craft huge hooks and sing-along choruses with lyrical genius is no easy task. Toss in incomparable style and a larger-than-life stage persona and you start to understand why Jack White is the most important rock guitarist-frontman alive.

The White Stripes are a living, breathing history lesson on American rock music. Rising from dirty southwest Detroit, it all starts with the Delta blues and a love of simple folk-rock. From there, Jack digs into the garage and fills the cracks with punk urgency and louder-than-hell distorted wail. But, to be the best you have to move forward, and The Stripes most certainly push us into the future. Every White Stripes album is important, but ten years into their career Jack and Meg have created what may be their best to date.

Recorded in Nashville, Icky Thump is a thick slab of rock pulling from all areas of the map. The album begins with the title track’s infectious stomp – easily one of the year’s best songs. Then, there’s the country-laced beauty, charming changes and church organ-meets-guitar sway of “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do What You’re Told),” the filthy blues and overdriven guitar of “300 m.p.h. Torrential Outpour Blues,” the mariachi trumpet and flamenco driven “Conquest” (made famous by Patti Page in the ’50s), the Scottish bagpipes of “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn,” the heavy riffs, quick dynamic shifts and spoken narrative of “Little Cream Soda,” the lighter, fun-loving “Rag and Bone,” the haunting, delicate ballad “A Martyr For My Love For You,” the slide-guitar workout of “Catch Hell Blues” and the lyrical revelation found of closer “Effect and Cause.” There’s also “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” where we find Jack playing like Jimmy Page and singing in Robert Plant’s sexed up high-register.

There is no question that it’s the twisted, compressed, technically absurd guitar outbursts of Jack White that make the Stripes so amazing, but what puts them over the top on Icky Thump are the lyrics. Here’s a glimpse at the title track:

White Americans, what?
Nothing better to do?
Why don’t you kick yourself out
You’re an immigrant too

Who’s using who?
What should we do?
Well, you can’t be a pimp and a prostitute too

One stanza and Jack captures 200 years of hypocrisy. Gawd bless him.

If you take music seriously – and not just one type of music, one band or one scene – you already know The White Stripes are one of the most important rock bands out there. From dusty country and sweaty blues to bagpipes and Mexican trumpets to garage riffs and stadium power chords, Jack White leads us around the world but always firmly plants us back in the soil of American rock & roll. Who knows where the Stripes will take us in their next decade. At this point, I won’t even ask, I’ll just follow. With yet another stellar album, (a shoe-in for “Best Of 2007” honors) Jack has earned the right of blind faith.

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