Brightest Young Things

The review concept is simple: every week Matthew reviews a record of note from last week, the system is based on Star(r)s, and at the end of the day lets you know what is in stores (or itunes or emusic) for you now.

Rating system
0 stars - Complete and utter garbage
1 star - Best just not to ever press play, save your ears for another day
2 stars - Not completely atrocious, but one you'll probably forget about as soon as it's over
3 stars - Good, but not great, likely with some excellent songs and others you'll skip right through
4 stars - Damn good album, one you'll definitely want to enjoy again and again
5 stars - Instant Classic

this week:

White Stripes, Icky Thump
4 Stars

The White Stripes will always hold a special place in my heart. Way back in 2002, I stumbled upon a little song called “Fell in Love with a Girl” and thought it was one of the greatest things I’d ever heard put to record. At the time, however, I mistakenly lumped the White Stripes in with the horde of “the” bands who were big at the time, The Strokes, The Hives, The Vines, etc. As the albums by those other bands began to fade from my listening rotation, White Blood Cells never faltered, and I listened to it almost unendingly until they released yet another brilliant album, 2003’s Elephant. The wait for 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan was too long, however, and the album was too much of a departure from The White Stripes I knew and loved. The bigger sound and the more elaborate production turned me off, and I thought my Stripes were gone for good. Little did I know that they would return in a big way in 2007 by taking it back to the basics and rocking it like they used to on Icky Thump.
With the exception of the bagpipe-filled experiments “Prickly Thorn, Sweetly Worn” and “St. Andrew,” which reside back-to-back smack in the middle of the album, Icky Thump is full of good, old-fashioned blues-based rock and roll. The album opens by throwing us for a bit of a loop as we hear a synthesizer playing over the usual Stripes’ thumping drums while the guitar plays second fiddle to the crunchy synth-sounds. It only takes twenty seconds for the synthesizer to fade away, however, leaving Jack White’s half-scream/half-talk to fill up the space over the sparse instrumentation. Twenty seconds later, Jack’s guitar explodes into a blistering riff and begins to take over the song, but not before the synthesizer can come back in to fight for its territory. The guitar and synthesizer continue to trade off throughout the song as the guitar parts get longer and more complex and the synthesizer just cannot keep up. At the end, the two instruments attempt to occupy the same space, but the guitar blows the synthesizer away in a seemingly metaphoric move by Mr. White that sets the tone for the rest of the album.
From there on out it’s just one brilliant rock song after the other, from the more radio-friendly “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)” to “Catch Hell Blues,” essentially a four-minute guitar solo with some “ohhhh”s, “yeah”s and a few short verses thrown in for good measure. Jack’s solos are possibly the best he’s ever constructed and can be found on almost every song including some especially amazing ones on “Little Cream Soda” and “I’m Slowly Turning into You.”
Icky Thump doesn’t contain anything as immediately catchy as “My Doorbell” or anything as arena-friendly as “Seven Nation Army,” but it’s the better for it. Songs like that would’ve felt out of place on an album that finds the White Stripes stripping everything down and going back to their blues and garage-rock roots. Though there is an occasional trumpet here or organ there, this is Jack and Meg doing what they do best, one going nuts on the guitar while the other plays incredibly tight, simple beats. It doesn’t seem like a formula that should’ve lasted this long, but when you’ve got a man as talented and visionary as Jack White running the show, there really isn’t any limit.

Out this week:
Chemical Brothers - We Are the Night
Kelly Rowland - Ms. Kelly
Three 6 Mafia - Last 2 Walk
T.I. - T.I. Vs T.I.P.
Velvet Revolver - Libertad