White Stripes fans have always known that the time would eventually come when Jack White's abilities and ambitions would outpace the duo's deliberately limited musical vocabulary. And while it may be too soon to proclaim that fated day to be at hand, there are definitely signs on their bold, bewildering fifth album, Get Behind Me Satan, that Jack might be beginning to strain a bit at his self-fashioned yoke.
As far back as their Sympathy for the Record Industry days, the Stripes have been a considerably stranger act than is generally acknowledged-- their tender, borderline-twee childhood narratives, Cole Porter allusions, and dogged devotion to white tees and Santa pants have flown in the face of a garage-punk orthodoxy largely dictated by the iconography of 50s-era B-movies and trashy pulp paperbacks.
Still, the group's past digressions were only faint foreshadowing compared to the ones that populate Get Behind Me Satan. Here Jack and Meg have made an almost-entirely clean break with the jet-fueled blues-rock of Elephant and De Stijl, forsaking electric guitar on all but a couple of tracks to instead work with pianos, acoustic guitars, marimbas, and other assorted oddball percussion.
But even with this reconfigured instrumentation, the Stripes can't resist finding new ways to place unnecessary constrictions onto their work, as evidenced by the fact that Get Behind Me Satan was written, recorded, and released at an extreme breakneck pace. As legend has it, none of these tracks were even fully written before the band entered Third Man Studios in March, and unfortunately, several songs bear the scars of their needlessly rushed delivery. Although raw, combustible immediacy has always been a part of the White Stripes' charm, at some point Jack's desire for spontaneity could resemble sheer cussed laziness, and here the duo have granted a discouraging amount of real estate to what feel like unfinished sketches or works-in-progress.
Jack has cryptically described these songs as an exploration of "characters and the ideal of truth," which apparently can be translated to despair-- and lots of it. There's none of the sunny, innocent optimism of "Apple Blossom" or "We're Going to Be Friends" to leaven Satan's mood; virtually every track drips with loneliness, alienation, and betrayal. Even the album's most outwardly playful song, the bluegrass-tinged "Little Ghost", features a narrator so desperate in his isolation that he falls in love with an apparition. ("When I held you I was really holding air.")
Still, a slight sting of venom appears to suit Jack well, and-- perhaps as testament to his time spent with Loretta Lynn-- Satan finds him delivering his most expressive and nuanced vocal performances to date. Oddly, two of the album's most jarring tracks are among the few to feature electric guitar. The opening "Blue Orchid" maintains the Stripes' impressive streak of stellar singles, as Jack's wild falsetto and processed, strangely electronic-sounding guitar combine for a heightened, spiteful crunch that's unlike anything they've ever done. And even that sounds tame compared to the accusatory "Red Rain", on which the singer-- his voice thick with quavering distortion-- angrily confronts his betrayer ("If there's a lie/ Then there's a liar too/ And if there's a sin/ Then there's a sinner too") with a spellbinding intensity, while a lurching floor of chiming toy bells and Hawaiian slide guitar spins beneath him.
Also exceptional is "My Doorbell", a strutting piano soul number that contains the album's most immediately nagging melodic hook over Meg's effectively funky cavewoman stomp. Meg also contributes surprisingly subtle hand percussion to the quietly self-loathing folk of "Ugly As I Seem"-- a song that illustrates that the gulf separating Jack from freak-folk artists like Six Organs' Ben Chasny or Devendra Banhart may not be as wide as it seems-- and what sounds like tympani to the majestic "Take, Take, Take", an ambitious, Who-like piece that follows an obsessive fan as he asks one favor too many of Rita Hayworth. Unfortunately, tracks like "The Nurse" crumble beneath closer scrutiny, due to their over-emphasis on clever interior rhyming ("the maid that you've hired could never conspire to kill") and soft-focused melodies that never seem able to make their way to the exits.
Other misfires include "Forever for Her (Is Over for Me)" and "I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet)", two great titles that undoubtedly deserve better treatment than they're given here, and the mercifully brief "Passive Manipulation" which again begs the gentle suggestion that Meg not be allowed to sing lead.
Even with a generous handful of tracks that easily rank alongside the White Stripes' best work, Get Behind Me Satan remains a confounding record, one that wears its "transitional album" tag like a heavy peppermint-striped crown. One can't help but feel that if perhaps the White Stripes had seen fit to take the necessary time to give cuts like "Forever for Her" or "The Denial Twist" a sincere revision or two, we might've been looking at a stone classic. As it stands, there's more than enough here to give Stripes fans cause to celebrate, although it may not inspire much faith that the duo will ever find the patience necessary to deliver upon their promising new innovations.
