The White Stripes - Jolene

Meg White and John Gillis are The White Stripes - a guitar player/singer songwriter and his ex-wife drummer. John Gillis is of course now better known as Jack White, and the couple are now known as brother and sister, a bizarre untruth peddled by the group for reasons that remain unclear. They lack a bass player of course, something many fans and critics have concentrated upon. Rather no bass player than a bass player playing out of step funk lines going 'dink dink dink' as many hard rock groups seem to employ! But then, The White Stripes aren't a hard rock group. They are very much rooted in the alternative scene with added blues influences ala John Spencer Blues Explosion. The White Stipes wear red and white ( and black ) matching clothing and have a burning desire for recognition and fame quite unlike the scene from which they were brought. But, anyways....sex, lies and videotape out of the way, what's the album like? Well, we open with booming, very primitive primal sounding drums and guitar straight out of the Seventies. Then the whole thing explodes in distortion - the singer is barely legible in terms of words sung, but sounds on the edge, as the whole song does. Its strangely exciting in its amateurishness, even if Jack White does sound uncannily like Robert Plant in places.