Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mount real]

So I've been streaming the new White Stripes album, and it ROCKS!! Pretty different from the others, while maintaining the same raw feel...anybody else heard it? Sure destroys Coldplay...."How old are you...anyway?" ROCK

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

There's a new White Stripes album? Seriously?

For a minute I thought this thread was about teeth whitening.

EDIT: just checked Amazon. 'Get Behind Me Satan' (best. title. ever.) will be released in the US on June 7th. Anyone know the Korean release date? 'Elephant' took a month or two to get here, as I remember.

So, is it as good or better than 'Elephant'?

Sparkles*_*

[indytrucks]

I thought Elephant paled in comparison to White Blood Cells. Nonetheless, The White Stripes are the best band I've heard since Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Bring on the new record.

[mount real]

It's totally different from Elephant, almost no guitar, it's like a great little soul record, so swingin, funky and catchy, while still more experimental than most big bands these days....it's one of those records that throw you off the first time you hear it, and you already love it the second time....a departure, but much more succesfull than Kid A from Radiohead, even though I loved that album......you can hear it here!

http://scenestars.net/2005/05/stream-new-white-stripes-album-get.php

Get Behind Me Satan....Baby!

[desultude]

The new album got a great review in the New York Times last Sunday.

[Bulsajo]

I tnink I just read something in the last day or so about Jack White getting hitched. [insert trite and tasteless comment about love and creative juices here]

[Chillin' Villain]

Goddamn, did I love White Blood Cells...

I had no idea whatsoever they were coming out with a new one... And a departure, at that... Better be out on the 7th here, too! Usually Korea's not too bad for that kinda thing...

[Badmojo]

Jack White and the White Stripes are the best thing to happen to rock n roll for a long time. White is just an artist, that's what he is. White Blood Cells was great, so was Elephant, and De Stijl is pretty damn cool too. Can't wait.

[sonofthedarkstranger]

[Demophobe]

3 songs feature guitar...the rest have a very eclectic mix...piano, marimba...very cool.

The Stripes are among the few giving me hope that creativity and originality are not dead.

By the way, Audioslave has a new one out as well. Great album....Cornell sounds as good as ever...gotta love the way his voice has matured. Surprised he can still talk....

Out of Exile.

[desultude]

[Hollywoodaction]

[stumptown]

[indytrucks]

A not-so-glowing review from CNN/Entertainment Weekly:

Review: Stripes' 'Satan' falls behind
By David Browne
Entertainment Weekly
Tuesday, June 7, 2005 Posted: 1:23 PM EDT (1723 GMT)

(Entertainment Weekly) -- From the start, Jack White has been full of mostly pleasant surprises.

Who would have predicted that the rudimentary guitar-drum duo he formed with ex-wife Meg would grow to be so versatile, with each successive album adding new elements ranging from scuzzy blues to power ballads to hillbilly hollers? Who would have imagined Jack at the helm of a marvelous Loretta Lynn comeback record? Who would have expected the guitar solo on Elephant's ''Ball and Biscuit'' to emerge out of nowhere to rip your face off?

"Get Behind Me Satan" throws another grenade our way. With its two-and-a-half minutes of boogie-screech guitar, door-knocking drums, demonic falsetto, and taunts of ''how old are you now, anyway?'' the petulant ''Blue Orchid'' blows the place wide open; it's reminiscent of the way previous albums launched with attacks like ''Seven Nation Army'' and ''Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground.''

Having satisfied their urge to shred, the Whites proceed to tear their musical playhouse down. For a good chunk of the album, Jack trades in his electric guitar for piano -- not to mention the very un-rock & roll marimba -- which is somewhat akin to Pedro Martinez hurling a football.

Peculiar and ballsy, this gambit immediately sets the album apart from those of the robust, polished guitar bands that have sprung up since the Stripes helped give rock CPR at the dawn of the decade. With Meg playing even thumpier than usual (at times you may think she's banging on a cardboard box or stomping her feet), the Stripes have rarely sounded scrappier. And for a while, the duo get away with it.

''The Nurse,'' one of the tunes sprinkled with marimba, is a haunted, cryptic warning about trust; just when the arrangement threatens to mellow out, Meg's drum or Jack's guitar makes quick, intrusive jabs. ''My Doorbell,'' with Jack bashing away at the piano and singing in a possessed-preacher yowl, is both dumb and rousing -- a simplistic ditty (''...when you gonna ring it?'') with a kick.

Once the musical novelty wears off, though, the disc begins to unravel.

"Get Behind Me Satan" is surprising, all right, but not always in the right ways. The tracks take on the feel of songwriting exercises in which Jack tries his hand at Led Zep levee-breaking blues (''Red Rain,'' ''Instinct Blues''), poky singer-songwriter introspection (''White Moon''), a fragile Brit-folk ramble (''As Ugly as I Seem''), and hey-bartender honky-tonk (''I'm Lonely [But I Ain't That Lonely Yet]'').

The songs have their moments (the chorus of ''Red Rain,'' with Jack's high-pitched squeal and greasy-spoon slide guitar converging in brutalizing beauty, is about as gripping as the Stripes have ever been), but that's all they are: moments.

Too many of the tunes -- and Jack's lyrics -- are undercut by lurching, half-finished arrangements. (I kept wondering which songs are about Jack's onetime flame Renee Zellweger. Since the two met while working on "Cold Mountain," the grating faux-mountain song ''Little Ghost,'' about a mystery woman who Jack ''can't do much to please'' and is soon gone, is a good bet.)

Jack proved his range with far less self-consciousness on the band's second album, "De Stijl." Here, he's trying too hard to be eccentric: ''Take, Take, Take,'' with its alarm-clock effects and lines about getting wasted in a bar and seeing Rita Hayworth, is nearly incomprehensible.

Given how accomplished a songwriter and musician Jack is, it's hard to say what's transpiring on "Get Behind Me Satan." Is he purposely making a low-rent album to deflate his self-created mythology, as Bob Dylan supposedly did with the abysmal "Self Portrait"? Is the very thing that makes him so appealing -- the way he incarnates the nearly lost tradition of the unbridled, uninhibited rock & roll wild man that dates back to Jerry Lee -- backfiring on him?

Whatever the motive, Jack seems to be intentionally selling himself short to make a vague point about cred (or something), and it's not to the benefit of his art; in fact, it's mostly exasperating. When it comes to future surprises, perhaps Jack should try this one: selling out more.

EW Grade: C+

[sonofthedarkstranger]

Just one self-important tastemakers opinion.