(OK, OK, I know I’m entering onto thin ice here with my little music review. M intimately knows a real, live professional music writer. Please be kind to my amateurish peckings.)

I’ve been a pretty big White Stripes fan for a while. M and I even did an artwork involving them. Their new album, “Get Behind Me Satan (iTMS link),” is pretty damn good. The garage-y rock stuff like “Blue Orchid” and “Instinct Blues” really… well, those songs really rock. Jack and Meg know how to use older blues or roots genres while updating them in a way so that they seem fresh.

Take “The Nurse” for example. It starts with piano and vibraphone but interspersed through the beat is some great heavy drum and guitar noise that takes it beyond the average rock-band-gonna-experiment toss-away tunes that bands like The Hives use as filler.

The White Stripes are musically fresh, not lyrically fresh. What bugs me about the album is embodied in the title: “Get Behind Me Satan.” WTF? Jack, man, you’re a white boy from Detroit who grew up in the 80s & 90s. You’re not a black man from the 30s Mississippi delta. Please drop this tired lyrical nostalgia and sing about what you know, not what you wish you knew.

And so ends my nickel review of The White Stripes, “Get Behind Me Satan.” permanent link to this post