When a band gets this big – arena big – they usually employ some fancy tricks to keep us interested. Maybe an Oxford Street-sized light show; or some pyrotechnics left over from New Years Eve. Equally, the set list will usually be a calculated affair: an explosive start, some ballads in the middle and then the BIG HIT at the encore.
Tonight is somewhat different. The Palace stage contains a five-piece drum kit, a few amps, two microphones, a musty old keyboard and a vintage 1964 cherry red Airline guitar. It's not what you'd call Zoo TV. And yet, launching into an unstoppable medley of 'When I Hear My Name', a feverish 'Black Math' and 'Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground', The White Stripes will dominate the stage in a manner that turns their competitors to dust.
For ninety minutes they give a four-armed lesson in the pure primal power of rock'n'roll. Reducing everything to a bare minimum, they essentially take a century of music and distill it to its purest form. A seemingly straightforward combination of the simple (Meg's rudimentary drumming) and the complex (Jack's guitar solos) that works every time.
Axe heroes of Jack's proficiency used to form bands with five-string fretless bass players, but it's this juxtaposition that keeps the Stripes so lean and vital. He knows when to burn it up and when to keep it simple - veering from the eight-minute freakout of 'Ball & Biscuit' to the two-chord simplicity of 'We Are Gonna Be Friends'. They remind us that rock'n'roll is often best when left well alone. Certainly, there's more power and effect in Meg's club-thumping than any technically proficient sticksman could provide.
And what's doubly intriguing is the pantomime that’s being played out before our eyes. Few still believe the two are siblings but the 'are they/aren’t they' debate still rages up on stage. Jack refers to Meg as his "sister" but then acts like a cuckolded husband. Gliding between two microphones he stands three inches from her impassive face spitting bile. At once it's both bogus and meaningful. We know Jack's acting, and yet – because the face into which he's raging actually does belongs to his ex-wife – we know there's an element of reality too.
In short, we are witnessing the living embodiment of a blues tune – the playing out of a myth engrained with certain truths and half-truths.
This vaudeville is another essential factor to The Stripes' appeal. In a multimedia age of over-communication and over-exposure the pair have retained an inherent mystery. Less is most definitely more. Detroit-born Jack hides behind some sort of Southern Gothic persona and speaks though he was raised in an Alabama swamp. In another age he would have been a gentleman huckster or maybe side kick to Ed Wood or William Castle. Occassionally, and presumably for our benefit, he breaks into an English accent worse than Keanu Reeves in Dracula.
But, lest we forget, there are some mighty songs here too, with 'Hotel Yorba', 'Seven Nation Army' and 'The Hardest Button To Button' explosive examples. Suddenly those Hendrix comparisons don’t seem like hyperbole. Closing with the traditional sing-a-long of 'Boll Weevil Blues' no one leaves disappointed.
As for where they take things from here…who knows? There's the impending Jason Stollsteimer court case for one but, having so successfully reduced music to its basest elements, there may be nowhere left for The Stripes to go. Perhaps bowing out now - as mysteriously as the came - would be a good thing. If they did they'd be remembered with nothing but awe.
