Elephant

White Stripes, The

album cover

A "Track One" for the Ages, and Then Some

In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby's 1996 novel (and the subsequent feature film) about record worship, the clerks in the local shop spend their days organizing everyday life into lists. There are debates over the all-time best party songs, the best side one, track one, and so on. No fine point escapes these aesthetes, who relate every possible human experience to three-minute songs.

Elephant, the fourth album from the Detroit duo known as the White Stripes, would likely have been a favorite in that store, not least because it opens with one savage blast of rock and roll, a quintessential track one that telegraphs the big rock noise to follow. "Seven Nation Army" transforms a lover's declaration of devotion ("A seven-nation army couldn't hold me back") into a crusade framed by a guitar riff that incorporates great hooks from British blues-rock of the late '60s and brash American arena fare of the '70s.

The White Stripes—guitarist, singer, and songwriter Jack White, drummer and singer Meg White—first attracted attention in 2001 with a fuzzed up, irreverent take on the blues and an ear for quirky pop songs (the best known is the disarmingly sweet "Fell in Love with a Girl"). Elephant finds the duo in its comfort zone—its pop leanings are evident on "Hypnotise," while the swaggering "Ball and Biscuit" reaches new heights of blues derangement. At the same time, it expands the Stripes' raw sound, with lilting piano and country-style guitar strumming, and, on the bizarro breakup song "There's No Home for You Here," lugubrious, defiantly out-of-time shards of metal guitar.

Incredibly, there's no letup in this cannily sequenced fourteen-song romp. Follow the White Stripes through simple hooks, prog-rock darkness, and campy vaudeville routines, and it becomes clear that this band didn't just come up with a killer track one. It made one of the most consistently riveting rock records of all time.

Genre: Rock
Released: 2003, V2
Key Tracks: "Seven Nation Army," "There's No Home for You Here," "Black Math," "Ball and Biscuit"
Catalog Choice: White Blood Cells.
Next Stop: Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
After That: The Hives: Tyrannosaurus Hives.
Book Page: 857