Icky Thump [Album]

A couple of weeks ago I opened the daily e-mail I receive (and usually ignore) from the NY Times and decided to look through it and see if maybe something interested had happened. I was surprised to learn that The White Stripes were releasing a new album, and that it'd gotten pretty good reviews. So, I rushed to eMusic and there it was: Icky Thump. It was the high of my newfound White Stripes fever and I just got the damn thing. The thing is, my expectations for this thing were quite the opposite of when I got Elephant: I already thought Elephant was an instant classic and couldn't expect anything less than that from the new Stripes... and I'll admit I was disappointed. I mean, the album is pretty good, but I was expecting classic. I was expecting an opening like Seven Nations Army, brilliant, surprising twists like "In the Cold, Cold, Night", or "You've Got Her in Your Pocket", loud music all over the place, an occasional Zeppelin revival, and an endearing closer "Well It's True That We Love One Another". And that was just not fair.

Realizing the unfairness of my judgment I decided to give it another chance and postponed writing it off... so now, some 10 days later and after listening to it for the 6th or 7th time, I think I finally got it: it's damn good!! It starts off weird, I'd say... Icky Thump is a pretty unusual track but it grows on you... somewhat following the structure of Elephant, they go on to shift a little bit to ballads, White-Stripes-style ballads, that is... then, they go over to some spanish-guitar-flamenco inspired tune that is just great!! The album goes on like this, sometimes surprising, sometimes loud and heavy, sometimes Guns 'n Roses-y ("Rag and Bone"??), The White Stripes are never less than fantastically fun. And they are occasionally simply amazing. I guess the bottom line is this is a great album, daring, but that doesn't have enough really genius-like moments to go face to face with Elephant. That's OK, most (great) bands go their entire careers without having anything nearly as good as Elephant. And most who do get there, get satisfied and stall. At least we can rest assured that's not happening to the White Stripes.