Icky Thump fizzes with ideas. Nevertheless, you wonder whether The White Stripes are trying too hard to prod a simple formula – guitar, drums, inscrutable irony – into a new direction.
As The White Stripes prepare to unleash another work of scuzz-bucket genius, frontman Jack White talks about his Catholic upbringing and explains why, as a teenager in blue collar Detroit, he fell hopelessly in love with the blues.
For those who thought the Stripes had become overrated, tedious nonsense (just me then? Right.) ‘My Doorbell’ was something of a revelation. ‘Denial Twist’ is great too, not least because it’s essentially the same record with different lyrics.
For those who thought the Stripes had become overrated, tedious nonsense (just me then? Right.) ‘My Doorbell’ was something of a revelation. ‘Denial Twist’ is great too, not least because it’s essentially the same record with different lyrics.
The suspicion that The White Stripes are a conceptual prank masquerading as a rock group intensifies with each outing.
For their fifth dispatch, Jack and Meg contort their beaten up, gut-bucket blues into wrenching, subversive shapes. A feral heckle as much as a pop record, it flaunts its weirdness gleefully and capriciously.
Seeing as Ridgeway St. is one of the two entrances into Botanic Gardens, it’s a fair bet that a sizeable percentage of this crowd strolled past The Lyric to get here this evening.
Which is entirely apt.
How The White Stripes turned the bare essentials into an essential noise, insisted that three is indeed a magic number and wound up becoming one of the most phenomenally successful rock acts in the world
Jack wailing like a preacher, each phrase getting its own gasp of breath, Meg's familiar pound-and-smash speeding and slowing as his fervent blues-gospel erupts and subsides
Like The White Stripes? You'll love their mates the Von Bondies, the Detroit Cobras and the Dirtbombs - all fellow Detroiters, all helping the Stripes bring the Motor City to Dublin Castle for the Green Energy Festival
