White Stripes, Elephant

We’ve been reading occasional snipes against the White Stripes that suggest a backlash against their meteoric rise. If so, that’s ridiculous. Never mind their media oversaturation, the opening dates for the Rolling Stones, Jack White’s new career as a Hollywood actor. Look past the red/white color scheme that just happens to be an effective branding method to make their product stand out in the marketplace, and the weird revelation that Jack and Meg White are divorced spouses and not brother and sister like they claimed, which always struck our suspicious minds as clever biographical manipulation with press coverage and mythmaking in mind. The only important thing is the music, and Elephant is as heavy as its name. Recorded in two weeks entirely on vintage pre-1963 equipment, their fourth disc mines more gold from the blues-punk vein the Whites work so successfully. Their approach, combining deep affinity for old blues with an all-out rawk attack of Pixies sneer and Stonesy swagger, isn’t as original as their proponents like to claim—Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s been living in this house for years. But with a record this potent we’re not going to quibble, we’re just going to turn up the stereo.