Spring Break
Stripes sneak-preview
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First of all, the new album, won't be in stores until late March. Some reviewers have copies of the album, but only in vinyl. Elephant went out to rock critics on wax for two reasons. The first is that the album was recorded with old instruments on old equipment with minimal capacity for fancy effects (mostly just reverb) and that sort of recording environment is designed for vinyl. The second reason, which probably sealed the deal, is that V2 Records (the Stripes' label) didn't want pirates to get a hold of the entire album two months before its release in stores.
Other labels have gone as far as sending advance copies in sealed portable CD players with glued-in headphones so that reviewers won't rip the album and post it on Kazaa or WinMX. Just to make sure an enterprising critic doesn't try to saw into the contraption to get to the disc, the companies demand the player and disc be sent back once the reviewer is done. How's that for paranoid?
Anyway, the hype over Elephant has been getting unbearable of late and I had to hear some of it. Then, by some miracle, a friend of mine walked into the Gatehouse with a copy of Elephant. My day was made, and yours will be too when it comes out in a month. Until then, I gloat.
As for the album itself, it rocks. Period. In places, Jack White sounds eerily like Robert Plant. Comparisons between the White Stripes and Led Zeppelin have been made before, but they are particularly apt with "Seven Nation Army," the first track and supposedly the first single. However, one must keep in mind that the huge sound Zeppelin made with four people, Jack and Meg White make with two, and at significantly lower cost, to boot.
The song follows a similar pattern to "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" from 2001's White Blood Cells, which is to say that it slowly builds tension, releasing it with powerful guitar. Maybe it's a production trick or a method of playing, but very few bands can make a guitar at its loudest sound like the White Stripes can. It's literally like an explosion - first sucking all the air out of a room, then shooting it all back out like a blast furnace at three times the temperature. If you play it loud enough on decent speakers, it's easy to physically feel on your face.
Other tracks stand out on this superb album, while none are completely unbearable. The one glaring mistake was "In the Cold Cold Night," where Meg gets out from behind the drum kit and sings in the most unconvincing and lilting track on the album. The second mistake is in "Little Acorns," in which the spoken word introduction drags on for over a minute.
Besides these bearable flaws, the rest of Elephant is perfectly executed. "There's No Home For You Here" and "The Hardest Button" are irresistible and full of energy. Take this album, pop it in your car stereo and find an open stretch of interstate. Seeing as that it will be almost April when you get it, the weather will be warm enough to roll down your window and crank the stereo. If you can plug electrodes into a potato to run a digital clock, Elephant contains enough stored power to light a small city.
If Elephant could be compared to any other album, perhaps the best parallels can be drawn to, of all bands, the Beatles. With its lo-fi sound, garage energy mixed with tenderness and old standards, Elephant sounds like what the second disc of the White Album would have sounded were the Beatles a combo from Detroit.