There’s only so much joy one could fathom in a rush, but Jack and Meg White’s passionate, noisy joy is unconfining on White Blood Cells.
Don’t get it twisted; their joy is owed to the rush the album was recorded in, their opportunity to take various angers and rebellions and turn them into The White Stripes’ trademark bluesy garage punk, wonderfully lo-fi, wonderfully minimalistic, completely against what one would expect from a rock duo that had really started to make waves at this point – including bits and pieces that feel like nontraditional, jam-like transitions, the sort that those smitten with John Lee Hooker and Delta blues culture would improv to one another whilst the cameras and mics are switched off.
To some degree, one may make similar claims about the two albums that came before White Blood Cells; the duo’s eponymous debut and 2000’s De Stijl. But on The White Stripes’ third album, Jack and Meg created, even in their minimalism, many of their biggest, mightiest roars ever, particularly in their pre-Seven Nation Army bootcamp.
Jack honed his writing on De Stijl, but came close to perfecting it on White Blood Cells. Here are the five best examples of his near-perfection, ranked from worst to best…
To give a quick honourable mention, where would we be without Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground? Its noise, its to-the-pointedness? The opener pledges to leave no ass un-kicked, but I do feel as though The White Stripes have released better versions of that kind of opening track, particularly the rambunctious, throwback smarm of You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl).
#5 – Offend in Every Way
One of the more unsung examples of Jack White’s penchant for rootsy riffing, Offend in Every Way opts not for typical, Muddy Waters-isms, but a drunken, slumping collection of notes and chords that snap from dungeon-like to jovial halfway through – a sudden shift from a mucky minor key to its ganglier parallel major will do that. Dig how this intro then recurs as the song’s harmonic basis, but with a complete shift in rhythm, somehow challenging in its simplification. One may consider such a shift to be “offensive” (ha), as the intro opts for a bit more of a shanty.
#4 – The Union Forever
There are a few cavernous regions of White Blood Cells that sound much crueller and darker than the rest of the album. The stripes are really good at sounding lost on the album, lost in contemplation, but even better at punishing with fear, with threat of tyranny and greed and too much power manifesting in the form of Charles Foster Kane. That’s The Union Forever; a Citizen Kane-referencing fightback that uses chromatically-minded chord progressions to up the anxiety on a whim. It’s top socialist indiscretion, without going all Mao about it.
#3 – Hotel Yorba
Temporarily, Jack and Meg recast themselves, on Hotel Yorba, as everything they wish, stomping their feet on the wooden boards, playing unshowy country music to an audience of unobstructive trees as they occupy their porch. As newly-redesigned, Reelfoot-dwelling mutant bumpkins with shotguns balancing on their noses, the stripes raise as much cain with an acoustic guitar and drumkit as they do whilst electric; Jack bashes his guitar as he strums, and Meg beats the hell out of her cymbals as one expected her to that this point in history. The ensuing cheer is magnanimous.
#2 – We’re Going to Be Friends
I suppose the acoustic guitar is the secret charm of White Blood Cells, wouldn’t you say? I’d say. On We’re Going to Be Friends, Jack uses the instrument not to match the war cries his Res-O-Glass tends to emit, but to perfectly illustrate the story of childhood innocence he recites. Walking to school, making friends, having your height marked against the wall; the song is incredibly cute without being cloying or sentimental in a way likely to elicit groans. It’s enough to take you back to your childhood, which is good provided your childhood was, you know, good.
#1 – Fell in Love With a Girl
What else were you expecting, ya jerk? Fell in Love With a Girl is the embodiment of The White Stripes’ early garage punk style; untampered minimalism converging power chords and drums with no bass, still enough to make an unholy noise, still enough to climb the charts. Jack’s vocals are some of his most urgent, nasally yelling with the erraticism of a singing spider, matching the desperate romantic contrasts his lyrics purvey, and matching the song’s devotion to energy. The intuitive rush of White Blood Cells embeds the song, like a babbling maniac going on and on and on about his girl.
