The White Stripes finally released their latest effort, Icky Thump, on June 19. I held off for a while reviewing this because quite frankly I had no idea what I thought. Frequently this means that given enough listens the album will grow on me and I’ll end up liking it a lot.

So far, that seems to be the case here. This is not, in any sense of the word, a “pretty” album. From the noisy and rambunctious title track “Icky Thump” to the screeching mariachi-fueled cover of Patti Page’s “Conquest to the pedophile-driven “A Martyr for my Love for You,” these songs are not, generally speaking, catchy and fun and poppy. They range from depressive to psychotic to manic to mad. Most of them are quite good.

That’s not to say that there aren’t light moments on the disc - I’m a big fan of the track “Rag and Bone,” which is like the token bluesy jam track. It’s a goofy track, half spoken-word, fusing blues guitar with Jack’s charisma. You po-mo types may amuse yourselves by recognizing that the song is a sort of meta-track analyzing the hodge-podge fusion style that the stripes use in their music.

There’s also a bizarre sequence in the middle of the disc - we get the bagpipe-driven romanticized-English “Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn.” The first time I heard this one I was sort of confused, but it rapidly grew on me and may be the catchiest track on the disc. It’s followed by the decidedly odd “St. Andrew (The Battle is in the Air).” I’ve got no idea what to do with that one.

There has been a sort of series of songs across several albums that continues here - I’m talking about “Dead Leaves and Dirty Ground” from White Blood Cells and then “There’s No Home for you Here” from Elephant. This time around we get “I’m Slowly Turning Into You.” These songs use the same distinctive chords and while I haven’t sat down to figure out an overarching narrative I get the sense that Jack White is trying to say something. They’re the only band that I’m familiar with that has done “sequel” songs on subsequent albums, and I kind of like it.

All in all I like this disc; there are a few moments when it’s just great rock, but I feel like it spends a lot of time meandering around as a sort of musical gypsy. It takes various influences from here and there and slowly bends each of them to serve the great god of blues rock - and by and large it works, be it mariachi guitar or Scottish bagpipes.

Jack White really drives me nuts sometimes - last time I saw him live he struck me as painfully pretentious - but he really is a musical genius. This disc works in ways that I wouldn’t have even thought possible. It’s redefining the blues, which has sort of been the Jack White project from the beginning. If you think it sounds interesting - or if you liked the YouTube links - go out and buy the disc. Please let me know what you think.

© 2007 Mykola Bilokonsky for Listen In. Some rights reserved. Cross-posted here on Newsvine.

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