Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 06/06/2005
Label: XL Recordings

The White Stripes are a band entirely ill-served by the machinations of the modern music industry, which dictate that major acts can only deliver new 'product' once every few years so that the marketing department has time to wring every last sale from it. Sure, this paradigm suits the Coldplays and Oases of this world but it scarcely caters to the more spontaneous talents of Jack'n'Meg. Consequently, they've been a rather frustrating band ever since ascending to the big league in 2001.

Back then, with nu-metal propogating itself like some pop-cultural plague, the world was crying out for a band with an actual aesthetic. From their colour scheme through their simple set-up to the mystery surrounding their past lives, every aspect of the package seemed loaded with symbolism, ambiguity, drama and romance, commodities in short supply during Fred Durst's heyday.

But while Jack White is the man to turn to for a tall tale or pithy biblical reference, he's never been a particularly consistent songwriter. Take their last LP. Despite yielding one of the millennium's defining singles in "Seven Nation Army", "Elephant" was nonetheless extremely patchy. For every moment to savour - the raging "Black Math" - there was another to forget - the execrable Led Zep tribute "Ball And Biscuit". Compared with previous work, "Elephant" offered too much bluesy bluster and not enough punky pep.

We've been waiting over two years for a follow-up, and in that context, "Get Behind Me Satan" is disappointing. Like its predecessor, it was written and recorded inside two weeks, and again, you can tell. It starts brilliantly, with the likeable single "Blue Orchid" giving way to the inspired, marimba-led "The Nurse", in which Jack infuses words of tenderness with his trademark brand of nursery-rhyme menace. But the album's third song reveals that the Stripes' make-it-up-on-the-spot MO continues to engender quality-control problems.

Bafflingly mooted as the next single, "The Doorbell" is a slight, irritating country-pop confection, its worthlessness underlined by the beautiful "Forever For Her" which follows. From here on, the album is a familiar tale of dizzying highs and terrifying lows. The swooning "As Ugly As I Seem" and rumbustious "Red Rain" fall into the former category; the ominously-titled "Instinct Blues" firmly into the latter, as do "Little Ghost" and "The Denial Twist".

Inevitably, there's great fun to be had pondering The Meaning of It All. Is "Take, Take, Take", a sneery depiction of an obsessive fan, actually intended to alienate the fanbase? Does "I'm Lonely" document Jack's jealous love for Meg? By being half-fantastic and half-rubbish, is "Get Behind Me Satan" dramatising the conflict between good and evil? And why all the references to Rita Hayworth?

In the absence of any answers, here's a theory. In a parallel universe, creatives control the schedules, The White Stripes release an album every three months, nobody cares who Jack shares his bed with, and nobody would ever have to wait two years for a song that can drive the "Seven Nation Army" riff from memory. Back in this dimension, we have to make do with mere scraps from Jack'n'Meg's table. That those scraps are more fulfilling than most band's entire back catalogues only makes it more poignant.

    by Niall O'Keeffe