The distinctive and dramatic style of The White Stripes was probably captured at its very best on the 2003 album Elephant. Full of damning humour, musical trickery, agitated fidgetiness, dirty bass lines and a band at their creative peak, Elephant stands out as one of the real highlights of 2003, a moment where the rock rule book was not just taken to task but publicly admonished, berated in front of its peers and finally told to get a life. Dedicated to the death of the sweetheart, the music is all consuming and leaves the listener breathless, as all good sweethearts should.
What makes Elephant so instantly recognisable is down the clever way the band immediately gave those listening to the album for the first time a hook within the first bar of the first song, the outrageously superb Seven Nation Army, something to frame the record around and set it apart from anything else released that year. For this Jack and Meg White should not just be congratulated and rightly feted for the production but for having the quirky musical insane genius to go ahead with it. From the moment the album starts the supposed bass kicks off, the first of the many moments where the album is akin to a three ringed circus, nothing is ever what it appears to be, nothing sounds like it should as the bass is in really an acoustic guitar played around with and disturbingly, brilliantly made to sound as if what you hear is what you are getting, a phenomenal moment in 21st century music subterfuge.
Where the band also succeeded was to release a video that fitted the music for the first single so well, the inspiring and image driven part homage to Ray Harryhausen and moving skeletons and the use of the contrasting colours of red, white and black that define the album throughout. The red, especially with the beautiful dedication in mind giving a signal of passion, creative distilled anger and delightful rage mixed heavily with the bleakness of black, the death and finality of all things. If one album displays the knowledge that red and black are the true opposites rather than the starkness of white of unobtainable purity and black of Victorian grieving the Elephant is that album. The passion of the artwork is replicated and enhanced in the music. Their music is unequivocally passionate and forthright, there seems a desire to get both points of view across between the rhythmic Meg White and the electric Jack White, the mixture is both exhilarating and dynamic but not without its anger.
Seven Nation Army, video aside is also very image ridden within its lyrics. Besides being a catchy track to which to open an album with, it explores themes of hidden reality, man-made and imposed and courage in the face of loss. It also suggests that the first sweetheart they are mourning is the actress Judy Garland with its references to the American city of Wichita, Kansas. The city is also of importance to the history of American culture having had the lawman Wyatt Earp pass through its territory before gaining fame at the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a slice of American history that also has found its way into American cinematic history with many films depicting the events of that 30 second shoot-out. Both this thought and that of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz give the album its credence of being dedicated to the sweetheart, not only in the alluring feminine form that the young Judy Garland bought the role of the young woman transplanted out of her natural habitat but the for the 19th century female ideal of a man who would stand by her and the law. Both figures are dependable as stereo-typical icons but in very different ways.
Seven Nation Army also uses the idea of the militia, the millions taking on the singular to get their point or agenda across. Whether it is through the music itself, the groundbreaking taking on the established movements and the latter refusing to budge, deciding to fight back with the full force of their might, musicians, and record companies for example, or even if the idea is more human than that, that one person standing against the overwhelming odds and collective thought can still win a battle, political or personal. Either way the imagery that the song contains is deep and enjoyable.
The opening track is not the only one that takes pleasure in having the warmth of a sweetheart fully on the listener’s minds, the rejection of the girl in There’s no home for you here could allude to any of the women discarded by society once their beauty has faded, women noted and renowned more for their looks than for their brains. Although not expressing anybody by name it isn’t hard to think of the likes of Marilyn Monroe who it is alleged became an embarrassment the Presidential office of John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby. The song suggests the act of a callous, if not bored man trying to get rid of the woman who has come to bother him. He suggests that he has tried every way in which get her to leave him alone but every action he has taken has either been wilfully ignored or completely unnoticed.
Strangely one of the finest songs on the album is the cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David composition of I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself. The song made famous by Dusty Springfield and originally recorded by Tommy Hunt. Although bands should always do their best to avoid covering songs by other artists, The White Stripes do something rather cool with their version to the point where it no longer sounds as though it is being sung with the wistful regret of someone at a loose end, instead the song focuses on the anger that Jack White displays throughout the song the bitterness of loss and desperate longing for company in a very male way. It is a stunning rendition and worthy of being included on the album amongst some great tunes including the aforementioned Seven Nation Army, The Hardest Button To Button and I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart.
Although Meg and Jack White only lasted together for another couple of albums more after the release of Elephant that hasn’t stopped Jack White has joined the likes of Dave Grohl in touring and performing with as many musicians as possible and in the last year produced his own highly rated solo album. However where some bands or acts look back with some regret about what they achieved, The White Stripes, especially with this album, will know that for a specific moment in time were one of the highest rated groups of the decade. An album that went against the grain so much that listeners may have felt like young Dorothy and realised they were no longer in Kansas.
Ian D. Hall