Like I mentioned in my last album review, Radiohead - In Rainbows, I owe much of my current taste in music to my friends. We all have people in our lives that introduce us to bands and music. My dad introduced me to such disparate artists as Jimi Hendrix and Hank Williams Sr. My grandmother is responsible for my love of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, as well as my unhealthy obsession with the Glen Campbell song “Witchita Lineman.” “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” is a great song, too. I’m not even close to kidding.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I have a friend to thank for making me sit in his Ford Explorer and listen to this new band he had just heard about called The White Stripes. This was 7-8 years ago and I was totally blown away. I spent the next few months collecting their back catalog and playing them for as many other friends as I could. Thanks, Rausch.

Bringing us back up to modern times, as I was whittling down my favorite albums of 2007, I came across The White Stripes’ “Icky Thump,” a record that I really enjoyed when I first heard it and then, for some odd reason, totally forgot about a little more than a month later. Granted, it came out during the summer and a lot of good records came out during the summer, so in my mind at least, this is a totally understandable oversight. But boy am I glad I started listening to it again…

They had very much fallen off my radar after their previous record, Get Behind Me Satan, which I thought sounded forced and unoriginal. In fact, I hadn’t loved one of their records beginning to end since White Blood Cells. I guess that makes me a snob or something. I also stopped liking The Who after John Entwhistle died…go figure.

Icky Thump, though, marks a return to form for Jack and Meg. That’s not to say that there isn’t growth evident on this record, because there most certainly is. The songwriting on “Little Cream Soda” is particularly good and “You Don’t Know What Love Is (you just do as you’re told)” is perhaps the best song in any genre for the entire year of 2007. The title alone nearly merits that praise by itself. Very few songwriters are as good at cutting to the quick as Jack White.

Also back is the hard rocking, simplistic garage sound that they had slowly embellished over the past two records. Jack’s guitar has never sounded better on record and Meg seems to have at least sat through a few more drum lessons, adding some new tricks to her repertoire. Most importantly, Icky Thump has highs and lows, consonance and dissonance and some truly gut-wrenching guitar solos. A tour-de-force cover of “Conquest” certainly helps, too. Patti Page has never sounded better.

In the end, the fact that over half of this album is instantly in my “classic tracks” bin put it over the top. I could listen to “Icky Thump,” “300MPH Torrential Outpour Blues,” “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” “Conquest,” “Bone Broke,” “Little Cream Soda,” “Rag and Bone” and “Catch Hell Blues” over and over again. It’s quite the line-up for a band that keeps moving forward while keeping a foot suck firmly in their roots. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about: (via the White Stripes Wikipedia entry)

In regards to rare recordings of the band:
The most rare recording has yet to be discovered. According to Jack White, he recorded an as-yet unheard song on a record. White and Brian Muldoon hid 100 records in 100 pieces of furniture in 2004 in celebration of Muldoon’s 25th year of upholstering furniture in Detroit. Says White, “we put 100 records in 100 pieces that year, and maybe, one day, they’ll be found. This is a record no one has ever heard and maybe will never hear, but it’s a nice time capsule. I’m sure a lot of upholsterers would open up a chair, pull out that record and throw it away, so that’s the funny part about it.”

Now, that, my friends is reason enough for me to include them on this list. Truly awesome.

Speaking of truly awesome…