It’s your guess if they are brother/sister, husband/wife, cousins, top 40, goth, blues, trendy, cool, or just another "the band", but there’s no mistaking that Meg and Jack White’s Elephant rocks. Jack may not believe in bass players and special effects, and this album defines why, as Elephant proves the White Stripes are no flash in the pan. Their fourth album was recorded in just under two weeks in a London studio with an eight track tape machine and a mixing desk pulled from Abbey Road studios – the results being an undeniable return to the basics of rock and roll.
"Seven Nation Army" opens the album with a frightening bass line played on the six-string alongside a simple marching beat. Jack’s warped voice bites like a bat of out of hell and ironically grooves to a blues metal beat that is smooth but dark. "Black Math" hammers in Led Zeppelin warlord dogma, with Jack pulling double duty on the lead volume of Page and Plant. "I want to be the boy to warm your mother’s heart," is a stirring rock anthem, based around a rock piano line and a bottleneck guitar lead that is part cowboy, part Steven Tyler in the fashion of"Dream On." The volume continues to drop another meter on the sound scale with "You’ve got her in your pocket," as the Stripes attempt a bit of acoustic folk. Lyrics of "you’ve got her in your pocket/ and there’s no way out now/put in the safe and lock it/’cause it’s home sweet home," will not make Jack the next Dylan, but somehow the antique aura of the recording and his sincere voice makes this song a believer out of a questioner.
As the linear notes suggest, the overall essence of Elephant revolves around the death of the sweetheart. The band is well versed in their blues, as "Ball and Biscuit" provides some mighty courageous blues guitar leads that is are down and dirty. Lines like, "it’s quite possible that I’m your third man girl, but it’s a fact that I’m the seventh son" could make John Lee Hooker roll in his grave with envy or shame, depending on whether the blues come from the Stripe's home of suburban Detroit. "The Hardest Button to Button" teases flamboyancy, but what starts out flashy, stays true to its small studio roots; although at times the guitar riff is just too familiar, and one could spend most of their time playing name that tune on this one. The vocals speak for themselves in "The air near my fingers" when Jack hollers, "I get nervous when she comes around," over and over, as you can almost hear him tremble and run for cover like an overdosed Jim Morrison. Not to mention, the Door’s whimsical styled organ here, shows the band is more than just a guitar and drums novelty. Perhaps the most pumped up tune of em all is "Girl You Have No Faith In Medicine" which contains fierce and vicious vocals, that propel the band into a screeching meeting of lighting fire guitar leads and run for cover vocals that could make a sloth sweat.
The duo shows its knack for the theatrical with a reworking of the Burt-Bacharach-Hal Davis tune, " I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself" in which the temperature rises from ballad to end of the line intensity. Meg provides a rear lead vocal role with "In the Cold Cold Night," which goes to show why Jack is the lead singer… clearly nothing special here. And "It’s True That We Love One Another" is just plain silly and anticlimactic, but shows the band could be their next variety hour if need be.
Elephant roars larger than the sum of its two parts and is destined to be a classic. Garage rock is back, and this stone cold thriller shows that the White Stripes are ready to be taken seriously as artists, rather than a who or what are they game.
