The White Stripes combines big, jagged blues riffs, Meg’s dirt-simple pounding, and Jack’s tortured howl into a shambolic mess that recalls Motor City forbears like the MC5. The songs don’t push your pleasure buttons as well as the later, more well-wrought stuff, and the slightly clumsy att... 

 De Stijl, named for an early-20th-century minimalist art movement, found the Stripes upping the songwriting ante, turning out another wildly noisy affair but making use of a newfound tunefulness. The album kicks off with an excellent one-two punch: “You’re Pretty Good Looking” is a slightly... 

 White Blood Cells was the Stripes’ breakthrough, thanks to major-label distrubtion and Michel Gondry’s, Lego-riffiic video for “Fell in the Love With a Girl.” The killer tunes didn’t hurt, either. “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” “I’m Finding it Harder to Be a Gentleman,” a... 

 White Blood Cells put the White Stripes on the verge of stardom, and Elephant took them the rest of the way. Recorded over a two-week stretch in London on an eight-track machine that dated from the early Sixties, Elephant finds the Stripes coming up with an ever more full-bodied attack. The opene... 

 Back with Meg, Jack made Get Behind Me Satan, which was weirder and less heavy than earlier Stripes’ records. The duo explored bluegrass (“Little Ghost”), messy, Stones-style ballads (“Take Take Take”), acoustic reveries (“As Ugly As I Seem”), and mirimba-laden grooves (“Forever F... 

 On Icky Thump the Stripes returned to garage-rock mode, blasting out stunners like the Zeppelin-esque title track, where Jack cranked up an Univox synth riff and took the anti-immigration crowd to task. Thump isn’t as revelatory as White Blood Cells or Elephant, but it’s still plenty of fun.