The White Stripes - Get behind me Satan

(Third Man Records, 2005)

The latest offering from Jack and Meg White, fifth in a line of successful albums and just as eagerly anticipated as its predecessor, ‘Elephant’.

The knowledge that it was being released on Monday (as I write this, was yesterday) had me leaping around at work, after seeing the guy who deals with the cds preparing it for general release. Yet, no matter how much I tried, he refused to let me buy it a day early! Oh well…

On the first run through the cd, it occurred to me just how much their music has progressed, whilst actually staying the same, if you can understand me on that.

‘Get behind me Satan’, is obviously a new work, but you can hear that there have been elements from the previous albums incorporated within. For example, raw elements from their first, self titled album, mellow, introspective elements taken from ‘De Stijl’ and ‘White Blood Cells’, as well as the self-assurance taken from ‘Elephant’.

Put all this together, and add more experience, and that’s the only way I can describe ‘Get behind me Satan’ without transforming into a puddle of gibbering adoration.

Needless to say, the album is worth anyone’s money.

The album opens with the absolutely amazing ‘Blue Orchid’. All I needed to hear was the first two bars of the guitar intro, and I was hooked. That’s all it took. The fact that the song ingrained itself onto my mind has nothing to do with it…nothing whatsoever.

Follow that with the slightly erratic melody of ‘The Nurse’. Which at some points, sounds like one big noise. Not in a bad way though, but in a sense that the drums are just hammered on wildly. Not sure it’s meant to make the listener laugh. But it sounds like someone has hijacked the track.

The almost ‘folk music’ feel of ‘Little Ghost’ offsets the other tracks, and doesn’t actually stick out that much. The lyrics behind the track are quote clever, considering the, how to put it, ‘theme’ to the song. Anyone who’s heard the contribution that Jack White made to the ‘Cold Mountain’ soundtrack would be able to draw comparisons between the two.

Surprisingly enough, Jack White doesn’t rely heavily on his guitar as the main provider of the music. The majority of songs, whilst having guitars in the background, tend to have a piano accompaniment. Take the instrument listing on the inside cover:

Meg White: drums, percussion, vocals, triangle, bells
Jack White: vocals, guitar, piano, marimba, tambourine

And in this sense, we have much more of a diverse range of sounds.

Vocal-wise, Jack assumes the role of lead vocalist, once again, but as before, Meg does indeed have a song of her own. Granted, it’s much shorter than previously, and whilst still sounding a little unsure of singing solo, pulls off an aura excluding more confidence than could be shown before.

And on this note, I’m looking forwards to seeing how this will do in the charts this week. I’m hoping for a number one album, but I’m confident that it will appear, at the very least, in the top three for this week. We’ll just have to wait and see on that.