Icky Thump

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On <i>Icky Thump</i>, The White Stripes did not sound like a band that was about to walk offstage for good. Jack and Meg White had gone rogue on 2005’s <i>Get Behind Me Satan</i>, using piano as the basis for most of its riotous song. But during the break between session, Jack toured with one of his other group, The Raconteur, and fell in love with playing guitar again while swapping nightly licks with Brendan Benson. That became the springboard for the songs that came next, along with the Hammond organ Jack now kept in his living room. From the sidewinding riff of its opening title cut to the nervy acoustic strums of closer “Effect and Cause,” <i>Icky Thump</i>, released in 2007, suggested a band reenergized by the basic. What’s more, the Stripes had finally graduated from making records in Jack’s living room with small havens of analog gear. The duo instead opted for Blackbird Studio, a sprawling Nashville complex founded by country star Martina McBride and her husband, John. “With The White Stripe, we were always scared of big studios and how we’d end up sounding too polished, or having to fight through modernity to sound real,” Jack told <i>Total Guitar</i> magazine. “But we’ve done a few albums now, and I think we have enough experience behind us to know what we want.” The resulting album is as expansive and exquisite as it is explosive; the band’s jagged contours captured with a precision that feels sculptural. “Little Cream Soda” is a monstrous reassertion of their search-and-destroy fundamental, while the junkyard novelty tune “Rag and Bone” gets back to the humor that had long been key to the band. But this wasn’t sheer revanchism. While the licks of “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You’re Told)” conjure a Badfinger open-road anthem, the mandolin strum, bagpipes drone, and near-yodels of “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn” suggest Led Zeppelin crisscrossing Scotland for inspiration. After six album, The White Stripes still seemed full of momentum and possibility. .

via Apple Music

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