The Last Word: Everyone! Loves! The White Stripes!

Brian Raftery | June 18, 2007 10:35 am
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Every week, we round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Today’s entry is the White Stripes’ Icky Thump, which is released tomorrow:

– “The band’s sound and method are 10 years old now, and this record is structurally familiar — with an approximation of a radio hit (its big-riff title track), a few blues longueurs and folk miniatures — but slightly more grandiose. Its rock is louder, its campiness richer. (‘Little Cream Soda’ is the closest they’ve gotten to metal; the album’s only song not written by Mr. White, ‘Conquest,’ copped off a Patti Page record, is chest-beating kitsch.) The setup’s the same, the colors richer.” [New York Times] – “Revisiting old territory also carries with it the hazard of backward comparison, and the highest highs of Icky can’t quite reach the altitude of the band’s breakthrough singles, but some of that inadequacy is tempered by the group’s more robust sound– De Stijl now feels anorexic in a side-by-side taste-test. Whether it was remembering their own advice from ‘Little Room’ or the freedom to write in another mode with the Raconteurs, White’s strategy worked its rejuvenating magic, allowing the Stripes to roll back the stone on Icky Thump. 8.0″ [Pitchfork] – “Far more indicative of Icky Thump‘s many qualities is ‘Rag and Bone’: a fantastic song, ferociously played, its lightness far removed from the dispiriting murk of Get Behind Me Satan. As Jack White hams it up as a Deep South Steptoe – “Well lookit all this stuff!” – Meg White stars whispering in a voice completely at odds with the hokey tone. ‘It fits me perfect,’ she murmurs, sounding both menacing and weirdly sexy. ‘Give it to me.’ For a shivery instant, the song’s mood is turned upside down. The White Stripes’ sell-by date seems further off than ever. Four out of five stars.” [Guardian]