The White Stripes have made absolutely no concessions to current pop sensibilities, cleaving to their own instead, which are incalculably more authentic and timeless. With the precision of a straight-edge razor, their music mercifully excises the rotting layers of trite, trendy, overproduced “musical product” that the hydra-headed radio/recording conglomerates have shellacked onto your brain. Long after the current crop of “boy bands” and c/rap “artists” have exceeded their “sell by” date and been casually thrown on the ash-heap of irrelevant history, “The White Stripes” will be played by admiring cognoscenti.
Unlike many of their mainstream colleagues, these folks are not preening pansies, pretentious posers, or calculating bandwagon-jumpers. They pursue a uniquely seductive muse, giving birth to a magnetic style that combines rawness, immediacy, passion, courage, honesty, and skilled musicianship. This is music that John Lomax would have recorded, if he were caught in an episode of the “Twilight Zone”.
Though they are so original as to essentially defy categorization, they are often described as “punk”, which is true to the extent that they perform with sufficient devil-may-care nonchalance to present a punk sensibility, while totally avoiding the who-gives-a-shit sloppiness and self-destructive nihilism that define all too many punk bands. Thus in modern parlance their music might be roughly described as bluesy, somewhat punkish, grungy esoterica.
Attempting to discern their influences, or define their music through comparisons with better-known bands, is almost an exercise in futility, since any given listener seems to hear vague echoes of his or her all-time favorite artists. Like an aural funhouse mirror, the listener’s own reality is reflected, though distorted to a greater or lesser degree. It boils down to this: you’ll hear what you like, and you’ll like what you hear.
Call your local “alternative” radio station with a request for “Candy Cane Girl”, “Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground”, “I Fought Piranhas”, “Death Letter”, “Hotel Yorba”, or “I’m Finding it Harder to be a Gentleman”. And don’t get a speeding ticket afterwards-- when you rush out to buy a CD.
(Please let us know if they have done a song with lyrics that would be appropriate to post here).