Eyeballkid’s Album of the Week

The White Stripes ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ (XL/Third Man)

The White Stripes are one of those bands whose every move is hotly anticipated. Having built up a huge following in this country, largely thanks to the efforts of the late, great John Peel, the duo have the ability to turn a grown man into a fanatical little girl who would sleep on a pavement just to get the first copy of their album, such is their intense and mysterious allure.

After putting out an album a year between 2000 and 2003 they waited a gruelling two years to come up with something new. The stellar success of ‘Elephant’ could explain the delay in releasing a new album, not because they wanted to milk it for everything they could get, rather that they possibly felt out of place in the mainstream. Either way, ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ really isn’t a follow up to Elephant so idle speculation about the bands inner feelings should only be ignored.

What it is, however, is another original record with that will definitely satisfy White Stripe fans and certainly entertain others. Those who expect the single and opening track ‘Blue Orchid’ to be the benchmark will be surprised. Few songs on this album feature an electric guitar, which is the polar opposite of their previous records. Where it does appear it is great – the riff in ‘Indistinct Blues’ shows that Jack can still be regarded as blues master and the noise it makes in ‘Blue Orchid’ sounds like nothing else before it. The majority of the remaining songs on the album are written for piano and drums, with banjo, marimba and other percussion added in various places. Production also plays a bigger role on this album with a crashing interruption over ‘The Nurse’ and something falling over on ‘White Moon’, providing incongruent but doubtlessly essential aspects to the songs. It’s all a bit strange but then these people are artists. It’s art. We wouldn’t understand.

Pretension aside, ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ has some peaches on it. ‘My Doorbell’ is an innocent and easy flowing rock and roll song that will have you singing along in no time. ‘The Denial Twist’ sounds closer to a White Stripes song as we know them, and the Rita Hayworth loving lyrics of ‘Take Take Take’ shows that the band do have a sense of humour, something conspicuously absent until this point in their career. It has to be said that ‘Red Rain’ is the one though. An extremely powerful song that will undoubtedly knock socks off live, ‘Red Rain’ is already being compared to the heavy rock of Led Zeppelin and this really isn’t a comparison to be made lightly. Ladbrokes would probably give short odds on this being the next single.

The experimental aspects of ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ are definitely successful. The imagery that comes with it, that of puritan American folklore (helped along by the inclusion of two accomplished country songs), works and shows artistic development. But these things also mark a somewhat sad departure from the punk/blues/indie White Stripes formula that worked so well in the past. It will certainly be difficult to deny the continuing genius of this outstanding band, but it is likely that ‘Get Behind Me Satan’s immediate reception will be more pensive than explosive.

words: Robin Harris


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