Rumors that Jack White’s second band could result in the demise of his first to the contrary, The Raconteurs might actually be the best thing that’s ever happened to The White Stripes. At least, it feels that way listening to “Icky Thump,” the title cut, first single and hair-singeing opener on the Stripes’ new sixth album.
Over the course of four minutes and 14 seconds, Jack and Meg White sound more like an honest-to-goodness “band” and less like a guitar wiz with a competent drummer sidekick than at any point since the duo released its self-titled debut eight years ago—an accomplishment safely attributable to Jack’s work outside the confines of his usual two-musician setup. Amid pounding kick drum, fiendishly squealing organ and snarling guitar, Jack completes the elephant-stomping-through-the-garden effect with a series of punchy vocals: “Icky thump/With a lump/In my throat/Grab my coat/And I was freakin’/I was ready to go/And I swear/Beside the hair/She had one white eye/One blank stare/Lookin’ up/Lyin’ there.”
Does the bull-rush carry over to the rest of the album? Not quite. The twosome approximate the bluesy, Zeppelinish weightiness of the lead-off track in spots—“You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told),” “Bone Broke,” “Little Cream Soda,” “Catch Hell Blues”—but never quite nail it. The success of the Stripes’ down-tempo numbers, meanwhile, depends on their lyrical ingenuity, a spectrum that runs from splendidly mischievous (“There’s all kinds of red-headed women ... it’s that color which never fails to turn me blue” in “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues”) to sadly clichéd (“You built a house of cards/And got shocked when you saw them fall” in “Effect and Cause”).
For every highlight, such as a theatrical, horn-aided cover of Patti Page’s ’50s number “Conquest,” there’s a counterbalancing lowlight, like the annoyingly kitschy, banter-marred “Rag and Bone.” Except, of course, for the towering “Icky Thump,” which is entirely without equal, at least until the next Raconteurs album drops.