Chuck Schuldiner Project

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Icky Thump - The White Stripes

 Why am I reviewing The White Stripes again? Because. This is the final album ever made by the genius duo and it is certainly awesome. This album is the hardest that the Stripes ever wrote featuring major punk elements as well as the other blues and folk themes that are found in every Jack White album. The guitar is powerful, dominant and beautiful. It controls the music and sets White up as a golden god. The riffs are powerful and cool to listen to and are nicely complimented by the drums. Meg White's drum work is impressive and highly enjoyable, while it is not overly complicated it perfectly accentuates the guitar and vocals of Jack White. The vocals are awesome and generally highly enjoyable to listen too, White's lyrics are interesting and varied and overall excellent.
The guitar sound of White is unique and has a magic all of its own. The most interesting part of the guitar work is how eclectic it is. The guitar is powerful crashing and chaotic at times feeling like crashing waves dragging themselves across a storm beaten shores. The guitar posseses the same chaos that many early Zeppelin recordings had, its loud powerful chaotic and probably mostly improvised. The drum work of Meg White is amazing because it goes along perfectly with the music. I am under the belief that they wrote these drum lines at the exact same time as the guitar lines to get the amazing accented feel of the guitar with the drums.
The lyrics are excellent and have a series of very interesting messages. While some of the songs are your typical Jack White love ballads and others are your typical Jack White folk songs some of the songs go into some more... unique topics. The song Icky Thump for example talks about immigration into the US. Another interesting topic is found in the song Rag and Bone which is about 2 beggars trying to collect stuff so that they can make money from it. The vocals of White are unique in that they are slightly nasally and whiny but not such that is annoying. Instead White masters his voice to create a high powered sound that fuses punk blues and folk.
Overall this is a killer album with some simply amazing songs that you just have to love. Jack White shows that he is a true genius with his amazing fusion of genres and for me that is just the tip of the iceberg. The guitar work is beautifully chaotic, in a way reminiscent of the early heavy metal and hard rock bands. The drums are incredible as they perfectly accent whatever Jack White happens to be doing on guitar or whatever he happens to be singing. The vocals are beautiful and cover a variety of genres and finally the lyrics are very good. All in all this is a beautiful album that I would highly recommend to anyone under the age of 55.
OVERALL 9/10

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