The White Stripes: Icky Thump

Label: Warner Bros.

Hey, indie kids: there’s a reason the White Stripes are 50 times more popular than your favorite band, and it’s not just the outfits. What’s the secret? The unnervingly appealing combination of Jack’s sick guitar shredding and Meg’s barely competent timekeeping? The oddly tossed-off feeling of most of their songs, despite their often elaborate instrumentation and oddly precise structures? The annoying/brilliant interplay of meandering vocal lines with the biggest, loudest, guitar squalls of recent history? All of these and more: not since Led Zeppelin has a band so deftly married the primal with the virtuosic, the bombastic with the ridiculous. Underneath it all, Icky Thump is a straightforward rock record – moreso than Get Behind Me Satan – but the White Stripes have never sounded so gloriously weird. Distorted bagpipes, pealing trumpets, country-jig mandolins, chainsaw guitars, and off-key choruses join Jack White’s whining wail for a record that sounds like it was recorded on a screened-in backporch overlooking the Mississippi Delta to kill time while everyone waited for the chess pie to cool. Brilliant! (Anna)