Critical Writings

Articles and Reviews: MUSIC

Icky Thump by The White Stripes (XL)

Jack and Meg’s sixth outing sees them rocking out harder than they have done since their raucous eponymous debut back in 1999. ‘Rag and Bone’ is a paean to the kind of cultural recycling the band do so well here, like on the no-money blues of ‘Bone Broke’ or the back porch blues of witty closer ‘Effect and Cause’. The album boasts a pair of faux-Celtic folk pastiches featuring bagpipe drones and mandolin, ‘Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn’ and ‘St Andrew’, as its two track centrepiece, in tribute to the Whites’ “Scottish ancestry”. But, apart from that strange interlude, this is mostly what Led Zeppelin would have sounded like, if they’d been a garage band.

First published in Magill magazine, October/November 2007