3/27/2023 0 Comments White stripes white orchid album![]() Then there’s the standout track, ‘Take, Take, Take’. ‘The Denial Twist’ adds a bass guitar for depth, making a song melodically reminiscent of ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’ much heavier than a mere re-tread. ‘My Doorbell’ uses the twin percussive attack of piano and drums to create the funkiest tune The White Stripes have ever put their name to, Jack almost rapping the tongue-twisting chorus and adding old school soul interjections like “Ride it home, yeah”, to sizzling and salacious effect. Instead of guitar, it’s pummelling piano that colours the rest of the album. The deeper you get into ‘Get Behind Me Satan’, the more the plot thickens. Then there’s ‘The Wreck’, an equally noisy track with one of the album’s many paranoid and accusatory lyrics, Jack demanding “You think not telling’s the same as not lying, don’t you?” Of course, the fact that there are three tracks with guitars may well be significant, three being an important number in White Stripes mythology (their Detroit studio – where this was recorded – is called Third Man they only wear three colours, red, white and black and until now their records contained only three instruments, guitar, piano and drums). ‘Instinct Blues’ is this album’s equivalent of ‘Hello Operator’ or ‘Ball And Biscuit’, but with enough unsettling touches to make it obvious that while that (obvious tunes, virtuoso swagger) was then, this (a very loose melodic structure, a strange warm-up at the beginning) is now. As almost unarguably the best guitar player of his generation, it’s a shock when you realise that Jack White has based only three (including ‘Blue Orchid’) of the thirteen tracks here on the bedrock of his squalling ’64 Ward’s Airline guitar. The general lack of guitar is the first, most startling thing about it. ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ sees The White Stripes lifting the lid on their box. I think it’s tougher to stay in the box and work.” People want us to do that because it’s the easy way out. It’d be ridiculous for us to now change it and employ a five-piece orchestra. He said, “the aesthetics, and the methods we use, and the instrumentation have always been purposely constrictive. And while there are no synths, or seventy-piece orchestras, the arrangements of ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ are enough of a departure to contradict substantially what Jack White told NME last year. ![]() It’s a baffling introduction to a very strange album, which shreds the old White Stripes rulebook (no bass, just guitar and drums) and pushes into territories way beyond the blues and rock of their previous four records. Unlike the Liam Watson-produced ‘Elephant’, which famously used no technology made after 1965 and sounded almost live, ‘Blue Orchid’ displays its artificiality as brazenly as the flower of the title, with sparse but dramatic production trickery including backwards singing, stereo panning and the song ending in mid note. Presumably not named after the Croydon discotheque, ‘Blue Orchid’ is a falsetto freakout, minimal even by White Stripes standards, whose relentlessly repetitive fuzz guitar riff weirdly calls to mind the latest Daft Punk album. It certainly sounds high on ‘Blue Orchid’, the single and first track. In among various red herrings, like Meg asking Jack “Are these songs about you? …I thought maybe you made an exception after coming out of the closet”, we learn (or do we?) that “this album was cursed when we started, and then suddenly came around near the end”, that Jack, who produced it, thinks “it’s our most dense sounding record yet” and that on it, Jack’s voice “sounds really high… like the old days.” ![]() The reasons for such haste will have to remain a mystery for now, as the only interview The White Stripes have given about ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ is a mysterious dialogue between the two of them given out as part of the press pack, whose aim – in typical White Stripes style – seems to be to tease and confuse rather than to explain. ![]() The swiftness of ‘Satan’’s appearance has taken the music industry by surprise (lead single ‘Blue Orchid’ was officially released on iTunes a mere two weeks after it was finished), especially given that 2003’s ‘Elephant’ album sat on the shelf for an entire year before its keeper, Jack White, saw fit to allow it out. ![]() Coldplay have been faffing around with their album for the last six months and talking about it for far longer, but ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ didn’t even exist before March, when it was recorded in a mere two weeks, none of the songs having been completely written beforehand. Compare ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ to ‘X&Y’, which will be released the same day (and no doubt commercially dwarf the Stripes’ effort). Four years after they broke out of Detroit and into the world’s imaginations, The White Stripes still don’t do things like other bands. ![]()
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