White Stripes’ new ‘Satan’ adventurous, creative, confident
White Stripes
“Get Behind Me Satan” (V2 Records) ••••
We don’t get a lot of these moments anymore in rock ‘n’ roll, so revel in this while you can.
Listening to the White Stripes’ new album is about confronting a breakthrough moment, experiencing something you know is important – even if you can’t quite pin it down on first hearing.
Only time will tell where the Detroit duo’s adventurous fifth album ultimately sits in the broader rock canon. But “Get Behind Me Satan” certainly feels like one of those albums that nudges rock’s sound and culture into a new direction. It just might be the most significant paradigm-bender since Beck’s “Odelay” nearly a decade ago.
From its spare but muscular opener, “Blue Orchid,” the record is flush with opposing forces: complex and simple, reactionary and progressive, understated and turbulent, all at the same time.
This is the White Stripes’ “Led Zeppelin III,” as the duo pulls back the tempo to explore new sonic spaces. Quiet, lush piano ballads such as “Little Ghost” and the closing “I’m Lonely” sit adjacent to cuts such as “My Doorbell” and “The Denial Twist,” which ride the swankiest backbeats the band has put to tape.
Those hankering for Jack White’s familiar crunching guitar work will find it in just a handful of spots, most prominently the loose rockers “Instinct Blues” and “Red Rain” – perhaps the only two songs that could have fit unobtrusively on 2003’s “Elephant.”
“Get Behind Me Satan” is a confident, creative step by a duo that has shown it’s not satisfied to sit still.
Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press
Black Eyed Peas
“Monkey Business” (A&M) •• 1/2
“Monkey Business” continues the kitchen-sink approach that made 2003’s “Elephunk” a breakthrough, but with spotty results.
The Indian tabla beat on the love-song single “Don’t Phunk With My Heart” holds some promise, and the odd, surf-mariachi flavor of “Pump It” is bound to be a staple of this summer’s sweaty club grind. But the bulk of the L.A. hip-hop group’s new, sweetly overproduced album is so slick that one song slips into the next.
There’s one gem: “Don’t Lie” is bound for pop radio smashdom, with lyrics talking about an issue that resonates – why lovers lie to one another.
And in a world where one single sells a whole album, this is unfortunately just enough for Black Eyed Peas to keep its superhyped momentum.
Dean Kuipers, Los Angeles Times
Blue Highway
“Marbletown” (Rounder) •••
On a scale measuring adherence to bluegrass music’s traditions, Blue Highway falls about midway between the by-the-book sounds of Doyle Lawson and the sometimes-wayward stylings of Alison Krauss.
The decade-old five-piece has an eerie way of making bluegrass feel contemporary, edgy even, without abandoning any of the laws laid down by its founding fathers. Much of the credit for that goes to members Tim Stafford and Shawn Lane, who craft songs that pay heed to lyrics and melodies as well as the sterling musicianship for which the music has always been known.
Although this outing opens with the blues-tinged “Marbletown,” it closes with a revved-up train song and haunts the listener with the dark and hurried “Nothing but a Whippoorwill,” it’s the mellow moments that linger longest in the mind.
Stafford’s lovely waltz “Quarter Moon” and bittersweet “I Used to Love Parades” are standouts, as are Lane’s aching “Tears Fell on Missouri” and bass player Wayne Taylor’s “No Home To Go Home To,” a timeless weeper about home, hearth and love that fails to endure.
Greg Crawford, Detroit Free Press
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