Peak: Fever in the funk house, Pt. 11 - Elephant

Or: How I fill up 2 GB

(Being the continuing alphabetical series of the contents of my iPod)





Album: Elephant
Artist: The White Stripes
Released: 2003

Track listing:
1. Seven Nation Army
2. Black Math
3. There’s No Home for You Here
4. I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself
5. In the Cold, Cold Night
6. I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart
7. You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket
8. Ball and Biscuit
9. The Hardest Button to Button
10. Little Acorns
11. Hypnotize
12. The Air Near My Fingers
13. Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine
14. It’s True That We Love One Another


Allmusic.com review:
White Blood Cells may have been a reaction to the amount of fame the White Stripes had received up to the point of its release, but, paradoxically, it made full-fledged rock stars out of Jack and Meg White and sold over half a million copies in the process. Despite the White Stripes' ambivalence, fame nevertheless seems to suit them: They just become more accomplished as the attention paid to them increases. Elephant captures this contradiction within the Stripes and their music; it's the first album they've recorded for a major label, and it sounds even more pissed-off, paranoid, and stunning than its predecessor. Darker and more difficult than White Blood Cells, the album offers nothing as immediately crowd-pleasing or sweet as "Fell in Love With a Girl" or "We're Going to Be Friends," but it's more consistent, exploring disillusionment and rejection with razor-sharp focus. Chip-on-the-shoulder anthems like the breathtaking opener, "Seven Nation Army," which is driven by Meg White's explosively minimal drumming, and "The Hardest Button to Button," in which Jack White snarls "Now we're a family!" — one of the best oblique threats since Black Francis sneered "It's educational!" all those years ago — deliver some of the fiercest blues-punk of the White Stripes' career. "There's No Home for You Here" sets a girl's walking papers to a melody reminiscent of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" (though the result is more sequel than rehash), driving the point home with a wall of layered, Queen-ly harmonies and piercing guitars, while the inspired version of "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" goes from plaintive to angry in just over a minute, though the charging guitars at the end sound perversely triumphant. At its bruised heart, Elephant portrays love as a power struggle, with chivalry and innocence usually losing out to the power of seduction. "I Want to Be the Boy" tries, unsuccessfully, to charm a girl's mother; "You've Got Her in Your Pocket," a deceptively gentle ballad, reveals the darker side of the Stripes' vulnerability, blurring the line between caring for someone and owning them with some fittingly fluid songwriting.

The battle for control reaches a fever pitch on the "Fell in Love With a Girl"-esque "Hypnotize," which suggests some slightly underhanded ways of winning a girl over before settling for just holding her hand, and on the show-stopping "Ball and Biscuit," seven flat-out seductive minutes of preening, boasting, and amazing guitar prowess that ranks as one the band's most traditionally bluesy (not to mention sexy) songs. Interestingly, Meg's star turn, "In the Cold, Cold Night," is the closest Elephant comes to a truce in this struggle, her kitten-ish voice balancing the song's slinky words and music. While the album is often dark, it's never despairing; moments of wry humor pop up throughout, particularly toward the end. "Little Acorns" begins with a sound clip of Detroit newscaster Mort Crim's Second Thoughts radio show, adding an authentic, if unusual, Motor City feel. It also suggests that Jack White is one of the few vocalists who could make a lyric like "Be like the squirrel" sound cool and even inspiring. Likewise, the showy "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" — on which White resembles a garage rock snake-oil salesman — is probably the only song featuring the word "acetaminophen" in its chorus. "It's True That We Love One Another," which features vocals from Holly Golightly as well as Meg White, continues the Stripes' tradition of closing their albums on a lighthearted note. Almost as much fun to analyze as it is to listen to, Elephant overflows with quality — it's full of tight songwriting, sharp, witty lyrics, and judiciously used basses and tumbling keyboard melodies that enhance the band's powerful simplicity (and the excellent "The Air Near My Fingers" features all of these). Crucially, the White Stripes know the difference between fame and success; while they may not be entirely comfortable with their fame, they've succeeded at mixing blues, punk, and garage rock in an electrifying and unique way ever since they were strictly a Detroit phenomenon. On these terms, Elephant is a phenomenal success.

I can admit it: I was late to the party with the White Stripes. For the longest time I held myself at a distance, occasionally pondering what the big deal was about these two weird pale kids from Detroit who had made a band without a bass. Much like I was too good for three-minute songs, I was also too good for whatever was considered the contemporary rock ‘n’ roll of the day. Sure, I had heard the high praise of how Jack and Meg White tapped into a vein of blues-based rock not heard since the hey-days of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. But by that point in my life I was cynical enough to instantly revolt from those kinds of comparisons; inevitably, all of the bands/athletes/politicians/authors etc. who were considered the “second coming” of whatever greatness had preceded them always seemed to fall short of even the most meager expectations.

So it was pretty easy to ignore the White Stripes, no matter how many times “Fell in Love With a Girl” and “Seven Nation Army” came on the radio (although, to this day those songs still don’t do much for me).

Then, a year or two ago, I thought I’d stop blindly casting off the White Stripes and actually listen to their albums; that way, when I wanted to be condescending and elitist to people who claimed the White Stripes were good, I could cite chapter-and-verse all the ways they were not good.

But, as has happened quite often in my life, my venture to prove my blind dislike turned upside down, and as I listened to more and more White Stripes, from Elephant to White Blood Cells to Get Behind Me Satan, I couldn’t help it:

The White Stripes are pretty damn good.

And so it is with Elephant, the White Stripes’ fourth studio album and their follow-up to the mega-hit White Blood Cells. Powered by the success of “Seven Nation Army,” Elephant was another mega-hit, and as I listened to the album over and over, it occurred to me that its success was not tied to one hit single; rather, the whole album surges with rock energy. Whether it’s the building-but-alternated power of “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” (which features some great Jack White screeching, both vocally and guitar-lly), the pulsating harmonies of “There’s No Home for You Here,” the frenetic “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine,” or even “In the Cold, Cold Night,” which carries equal parts sultry allure and nerdy awkwardness, Elephant is a complete album, worthy of listen from the opening hit single all the way to the grinning closer “It’s True That We Love One Another” (and that list doesn’t include the awesomeness of “The Air Near My Fingers” or “The Hardest Button to Button”).

For me, the highlight of the album is the seven-minute primal blues jam “Ball and Biscuit.” I once read somewhere (I think it was in Rolling Stone) that the White Stripes are proof that a couple of kids in a garage band really can make it big, provided those kids are geniuses. I think “Ball and Biscuit” puts that claim on display as well as anything else: the groove is basic and the guitar licks are raw, to say the least. But it’s that rawness that draws us all into the White Stripes every time.