The Top 10 Albums of 2007: #3

Icky Thump

3) “Icky Thump”, by The White Stripes

This, lady and gentlemen, is the album that got me back into The White Stripes. After the horrible fiasco which was “Get behind Me Satan” (which I now have learned to love slightly more than I did before), I was really apprehensive about picking this album up. What if it was another disaster? I don’t think I could take another “Get behind Me Satan” and live; where were the days of yore, the days of “White Blood Cells” and “Elephant”? So I listened to the single, title track ‘Icky Thump’, when my friend gave it to me this September (yeah, I know, I was a bit late on picking up this album). And I listened to it again. And again. And I watched the music video for it a few times. Then I looked up their second single, ‘You Don’t know what Love Is (You Just Do as You’re Told)’. And I listened to that quite a few times. And then I realized something that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside: no doubt, this album was going to be great, if not a masterpiece.

Three months and an obscene number of listens later, I stand by that statement. This album is my personal favorite out of the White Stripes’, and although it doesn’t entirely revert back to the garage-rock days of yore, it gets pretty damn close. The album starts out with the single ‘Icky Thump’, where you learn three things. Meg White is a really good, if unorthodox, drummer; Jack White is a really good, if unconventional, singer/songwriter; and he still hasn’t given up playing with synthesizers. The energy that flows between them is especially strong on this album. You can’t see them, but you get a gut feeling that on tracks such as ‘Rag & Bone’ and ‘St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Sky)’, they were having a great deal of fun with the composition/recording process. The album has moments where it’s wonkier than if the Whites were replaced with chimpanzees and moments where it’s as serious as a heart attack. Tracks such as ‘Conquest’ make you stop and think “Why the hell is this song so over-the-top?” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either. The bombastic sound they adopt for this album is colossal where it counts, then quiet and contemplative in other pivotal moments, such as ‘300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues’. The shift in sounds is interesting to listen to, yet it doesn’t alienate the listener one bit. The album retains a bit of the strangeness that was on “Get behind Me Satan”, reverts back to a bit of the simplicity of their first few albums, and fuses the the sound into “Icky Thump”, which makes it accessible, fun, and above all, powerful.

The low points of the album are really hard to pinpoint. Personally, I don’t like ‘A Martyr for My Love for You’, because it sort of betrays the badass Jack White who sings on the other tracks and presents a singer who runs away from his love for reasons unknown. Also, the different styles the band tries on songs like ‘Conquest’, ‘Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn’, and ‘Rag & Bone’ sometimes require a critical ear. I’m not a big fan of ‘Prickly Thorn’ either, but a lot of people have told me it’s their favorite song on the CD. Above it all, “Icky Thump” is a simply amazing album no matter how you look at it. But that being said, different White Stripes fans will find different things amazing about it. The album is a good choice for both long-time fans and for newcomers, and no two listens of the album are the same.

Recommended Listening: “Icky Thump”, “You Don’t know what Love Is (You Just Do as You’re Told)”, “Conquest”, “Effect & Cause”.

-blake