The White Stripes - Elephant

From the beginning tribal toms of "Seven Nation Army", you know that the White Stripes have made yet another unnervingly good album. You know, you just would rather not admit it. The hype around the White Stripes annoyed me, the idol-worship, the pictures of them with a monkey, the red and white clothes. It's too much, isn't it? They can't be that good, right? So I buy White Blood Cells so I can hear what this band has to offer instead of the Lego song ("Fell in Love With A Girl"). Okay, so everything on the album's pretty good. Better than the Strokes, so sometimes hype is warranted. But they can't top "Hotel Yorba", can they? They can't come up with anything else with this Delta blues/punk hybrid things, can they? They can't be more than this fluke of red and white brothersistercousinwifedivorees, right? Wrong. Elephant is a pretty kick ass album. From the "Ah-ah-ah-ah"'s in "Black Math" to the surging pulse and lip-curled spit of "The Hardest Button to Button" to the silly, Beatles-esqe run-out of "Well It's True That We Love One Another" (with special guest Holly Golightly, who, by the tangent, is nothing compared to Capote's character). They also stay sweet, moving their "I Can Tell That We Are Going to Be Friends" relationship to the lovesick "You've Got Her in Your Pocket." Meg sings on "In The Cold Cold Night", and they cover crooner Burt Bacharach on "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" but those songs seem to just kind of move you to songs likethe blues-tinged, cocky-grained "Ball and Biscuit". The tongue-sliding spoken bits (the superb "There's No Room For You Here"- "I'm only waiting for the proper time to tell you that it's impossible to get along with you... Unfortunately I have come across an answer/ Which is go away and do not leave a trace") with the rollicking beat, choral belt, and reeling feedback. This is an exciting album, a good album, an album that has pieces of serious wrapped around a fun core. Jack White's voice is an urgent wail and the music throttles forward like The Who's resurrected guitars ("Girl,You Have No Faith In Medicine"). With all this...energy, the Stripes come out without sounding like they're ripping anyone off, that they enjoy what they're doing, and that they've just GOT to play this music. It's something that I feel bands like Radiohead have lost- The urgency. My hope is that the White Stripes don't run out of this seemingly pressing push to make their excellent music, because they are good, they are, perhaps, the lasting sweethearts that they dedicated Elephant too. [www.whitestripes.com]