Whether or not you want to swallow the hype, it cannot be denied that a mere duo simply aren't supposed to be capable of making this kind of racket. The White Stripes have been everywhere for the last few weeks – from the Rising stage at Witnness to the news pages of the Daily Bloody Telegraph. Granted it has been the August silly season, when there is less 'real' news than there are tabloids with a genuine conscience, but all you really need to know isn't whether Jack and Meg White are brother and sister or divorcees, but that they are quite simply brilliant and do everything that the stupidly over-rated Jon Spenser Blues Explosion promised but never delivered.

White Blood Cells is a gutsy, ballsy howling wolf of a record. It is the sound of two people recklessly vandalising the American folk-blues tradtion to fuse their own pop punk signature. It’s funny ('Hotel Jorba'), angry ('I Think I Smell A Rat'), lovelorn ('The Same Boy You've Always Known'), cute ('We're Going to Be Friends') and always totally exhilarating and utterly entertaining. Jack has a unique ability to tell a classic yarn within one verse and to exorcise a thousand demons with every chorus.

White Blood Cells is only available on the fiercely independent Californian label Sympathy for the Record Industry, and the smart money is on the Stripes to get snapped up by Rough Trade or XL or some other major-affiliated outfit. Snap this one up before it becomes a collector's item. And don't say I didn't warn ya.