De Stijl

About

“I’ll fall in love with you,” Jack White croons as the pounding drums and piano of “Apple Blossom” relax at last. “I think I’ll marry you.” Thing i, only months before The White Stripes recorded the duo’s second album, Jack and Meg White had quietly divorced, their marriage ending in less than four year. Though Jack assumed their band was over just as it had found momentum, Meg insisted they press on and finish their second record a year after their debut was done. Good thing, too: Released in 2000, <i>De Stijl</i> distilled the brutalist blues-rock of their debut into its pure essence and expanded the scope of their sound and vision. <i>White Blood Cells</i> may have made the purported brother and sister from Detroit household names when it was released in 2001, but <i>De Stijl</i> had already made it clear that their electric eccentricity was not a fluke. <i>De Stijl</i> hinge, of course, on The White Stripes’ atavistic two-piece rock. Rarely would the band hit harder than on “Let’s Build a Home,” a whoop-out-loud ode to making the most out of disaster, or its chaser, the deliriously fun bit of doggerel called “Jumble, Jumble.” And their riff-and-rhythm tandem was supreme on “Hello Operator,” with Jack’s slide purring over Meg’s tom thwack. But it’s the newfound finesse that’s most intriguing here, along with all the future possibilities it suggest. While Jack and Meg had covered Bob Dylan on their debut, they instead invoke him on <i>De Stijl</i>’s “Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise,” a prescient bit of romantic defense that preempts the attacks Meg would soon face for her wonderfully primitive drumming. And “A Boy’s Best Friend” is a compelling death waltz, with Jack affirming his perennial outsider status over a beat that conjures a faltering heart. Jack steps out as an actual songwriter on <i>De Stijl</i>, digging into subtly surreal narrative. .

via Apple Music

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