Jack White has spent the last two years playing with his excellent band The Raconteurs, raising babies in Nashville with his model wife, and talking to the press about how much he’s enjoyed mellowing out. But White found himself as an artist within the self-enforced rigidity of the White Stripes, and as much as he may like palling around with Brendan Benson and pushing baby carriages, last night’s White Stripes show at New York’s Fillmore East suggests he’s ready to be a rock star again.
The White Stripes, who are currently promoting yesterday’s release of their sixth album, Icky Thump, packed hundreds of committed fans plus the requisite handful of bold-ish names (Macaulay Culkin, Andy Samberg, who seems to have replaced Jimmy Fallon as the officially rock-informed SNL cast member, and Jamie Burke, Sienna Miller’s boyfriend who fronts his own band, Bloody Social) into this steamy venue for a somewhat secret show that went on for two long hours of mostly awesome, occasionally brilliant, and sometimes weirdly droning rock.
The first half hour of the set was a cathartic explosion of brawny, bluesy aggression as the band ripped through songs the crowd was dying to hear. These included “Dead Leaves And the Dirty Ground,” the new single “Icky Thump,” “Hotel Yorba,” their much-loved cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” and a particularly mesmerizing take on “I Think I Smell A Rat,” which White tricked out with weird sonic allusions to Dick Dale’s Pulp Fiction-affiliated surf-guitar romp “Misirlou.” Midway through the show the band played a string of comparatively low-key tunes, like “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known” and the Meg-sung indie-boy pleaser “In The Cold, Cold Night.” By the time they got to the elegant, heartbreaking renditions of “Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart” and “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket” half the crowd was either at the bar attempting to re-hydrate or out the door cooling off in the rain. Which is too bad for them because the encore was its own mini-set of inspired blues-rock fury.
The first song was the tightly-wound psychedelic romp, “Blue Orchid,” after which Jack told a baffling story about camping as a child with a boy who “caught and killed a squirrel with his bare hands,” which we happily deleted from our brains after hearing “A Martyr For My Love For You,” a catchy, conversational send-off to an almost lover from Icky Thump. The last three songs of the night, “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself,” “Ball and Biscuit,” and “Boweevil” were loud, loose sing-alongs. Jack prowled the stage, traversing from mic to mic, nodding like a punk rock conductor at Meg and eyeing the sweat soaked, rapturous audience approvingly.
Being in the White Stripes involves following a lot of rules: No admitting you aren’t related, no dressing outside the code, no playing with other people, no … bass. We can understand how Jack and Meg might have grown weary of all the intense structure that originally set them free in that little Detroit room back in 1997. But after two cathartic hours onstage with nothing but each other, a handful of mics and the noise they can make together, this former couple, who still insist they’re brother and sister, stood calmly at the top of the stage in their vintage White Stripes wear (no more theatrical rodeo costumes) and received their applause with what seemed like relief. It’s good to have the White Stripes back.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Bloomfield
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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
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