Amazon's resident critic says that Get Behind Me, Satan is the White Stripes's strangest and least focused album but also their finest -- and that's not a bad summary. As with a lot of great Bob Dylan albums it gives the impression of someone rummaging around in the attic of American music and American culture looking for answers to some desperate personal problems -- and even if the answers aren't always forthcoming, there's still the consolation of realizing that there are a lot of cool and scary things up there.
Jack White on this album bumps into a lot of ghosts and has a disturbing encounter with Rita Hayworth as he deconstructs his garage band style and inflects it with deranged pop and country interpolations. He's always done this sort of thing musically, tying it all together with his strong blues-based guitar -- but this time nothing gets tied together too neatly. It's almost as though he's thinking out loud in the studio and letting us eavesdrop on the session.
The result is raw and silly and powerful and eloquent by turns, defying the slick sound and off-the-rack attitude that homogenizes most bands these days, even those in the neo-rock movement the Stripes have spearheaded.
Jack and Meg are simply continuing their conversation with every tradition of American popular music -- powered by the blues but ranging far beyond them . . . on a spiritual and anguished search for the soul of the times. In his liner notes to the album Jack rails against the sarcasm and irony of pop posturing today -- he wants us to face the terror squarely. The White Stripes, like the great bluesmen that inspired them, are taking on the devil himself -- determined to get at least a few steps ahead of him before it's too late.
Here's a link to the music video of one of the album's best songs:
Blue Orchid
