The White Stripes

Get Behind Me Satan - 2005

Get Behind Me Satan is the band's fifth album and also the most natural and elemental one to date by the brother/sister husband/whife guitarist-vocalist/drummer duo. It is also their best work, an Exile on Main Street-ish mish-mash where the sum is greater than the parts. In a world where the music industry is increasingly driven by singles and downloads, it's nice to be reminded how brilliant is to listen to an album, especially one who is so unpredictable as this one. On this one the loud hard driven guitar has been put a bit aside in favour of the more rafined loudness of the piano. Nevertheless, most tunes sound like rough mixes at first; almost every one of the tracks has something particularily loud in the mix--the guitar solo in "The Nurse," the drums in "Doorbell," everything in "Blue Orchid." After listening to the album a couple of times however, it becomes clear that this is the the exact sound the group desires and that they envision the studio as an instrument so much as exposing the nuts and bolts in the process along the way.

There are some duds for the more meticulous ones: the wanky blooze-rawk number "Instinct Blues" goes on much longer than you might expect and it would be nice if "The Nurse" had a real chorus. Whether "Passive Manipulation" is about the wife-or-sister schtick, if the cover artwork indeed has Jack and Meg calling each other devils, and which scripture is referred to by the album's title (Matthew, Mark or Luke?): none of that matters so much as the fact that this album is strangely sprawling and obliquely ass-kicking, head banging at the same time. "Orchid" is a rockdisko sonic smash that shows how to really get rock kids on the dancefloor. Meanwhile, "Doorbell" sounds roughly enough like the Jackson Five to totally rule, and "Forever for Her" is a very cool ballad with beautiful lyrics. The fact that some marimbas provide the driving force to "Forever" makes it all the better.