CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of The White Stripes: Get Behind Me Satan

Friday, July 22, 2005

this entry brought to you by nine inch nails, "only"




After an artist has a release that is met with critical and commercial success (in this case, 2003's phenomenal Elephant), the artist will often go back to the drawing board and create a defiant, challenging record, one that the critics inevitably love, but weeds fans out that were jumping on the bandwagon from the real ones that are in it for the long haul. Bob Dylan did it when he plugged in his guitar 40 years ago at the Newport Folk Festival. REM did it when they unplugged theirs and released Automatic for the People. Radiohead did it with Kid A. Get Behind Me Satan is such an album. Although The White Stripes are a guitar band and the first single, "Blue Orchid", is a blistering headbanger in the vain of Led Zeppelin, this is not a guitar album.

I'm certainly never one to endorse giving the audience what they want. I'm a firm believer that audiences don't know what they want until they're exposed to it. Changing one's sound can commercially be the kiss of death, but artistically, people come back for more when they're challenged. Without challenge, audience will grow bored and listless. That Get Behind Me has a different sound than Elephant doesn't bother me, but I can't help but feel a little frustrated with the lack of guitar. With exception to the monster-riff-chugging of "Blue Orchid", the two guitar songs, "Instinct Blues" and "Red Rain" are sloppy and not especially well played. It doesn't make them bad songs at all, in fact, "Instinct Blues", is a crunchy, thrashy come-on, and is a highlight of the record. The problem is, knowing full well what Jack White can do with a guitar makes you yearn for the occasional bluesy punk solo, or indeed, a solo at all. Then again, White Blood Cells, The Stripes' breakthrough, had no solos at all, so the lack of them here doesn't have to be an issue. Still, I dare you to get through the whole record and not wish for more guitar.

Get Behind Me, as I said, is deliberately challenging, sometimes to the point where even die-hard fans will scratch their heads. Two songs (the lovely "Forever for Her is Over For Me" and the lovely but uneven "The Nurse") prominently feature a xylophone-sounding instrument called a marimba. "Little Ghost" is a bluegrass ditty (complete with Jack harmonizing with himself with appropriately cartoonish voices) that sounds like it was meant for the Cold Mountain soundtrack. There are seemingly random stabs of noise punctuated in "The Nurse"; in fact, the whole record has several random sounds throughout it (most notably what sounds like an old rotary phone ringing once in the background of "Take Take Take"), that make you question whether they were happy studio accidents or intentional. Meg sings a song about knowing the difference between a father and a lover (what the hell?). There's an incredible amount of lyrics in every song-- most lines have so many syllables they defy you to sing along. And, for some reason or another, Get Behind Me has an odd preoccupation with Rita Hayworth.

However quirky and occasionally obtuse, Jack White is still an incredibly talented man and manages to make these mostly piano based grooves rockingly infectious-- even more of a throwback to his beloved 70's than on previous records. "My Doorbell" is possibly the most deliriously catchy song about lonesomeness you'll hear all year. "The Denial Twist" is a head-bopping groove that's at once grinning and biting as Jack enthusiastically spits about how to romance a lady good and proper. There's a musing on the downfalls of fame in the form of "Take Take Take" where Jack imagines a well-meaning fan not able to get enough from Rita Hayworth, a song that features him using multi-channel vocals that cut in and out of one another-- high grade stuff from ordinarily uber-minimalist White. Meg, Jack's drumming partner in crime, still won't win any drummer-of-the-year awards, but is starting to show some surprising Ringo Starr qualities. Indeed, no matter what tempo or style of the song, Meg blends in seamlessly, punctuating Jack's groove perfectly every time. Which, honestly, is the only thing a drummer's really supposed to do, and she does it perfectly every time.

In the end, Get Behind Me has plenty of moments of sheer brilliance and won't disappoint as an album, but it's not as good as The Stripes' previous record, Elephant, and, honestly, I can almost guarantee that you'll pretty much prefer any of their others over it, aside from their garage-y self titled debut. Still, that's not a crack about Get Behind Me at all, as the previous three were all album-of-the year worthy, and one can't fault a new record for being great but not the best. It's very telling, in fact, that a modern-day guitar god could ditch the instrument that made him famous, and still create as incredibly compelling an album as this.
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with love from CRS @ 2:48 PM 

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