‘St Andrew’: The song that derailed the final album by The White Stripes
It’s rare that a band goes out at the peak of their powers for reasons that aren’t tragic. Warehouse: Songs and Stories by Hüsker Dü, Random Access Memories by Daft Punk, Abbey Road by The Beatles —the last album they recorded—all records that ensure a band’s legacy will remain forever intact. One record that should be proudly added to that lineage is The White Stripes’ 2007 LP Icky Thump. A record as good as its name is bad, and its name is truly godawful.
Coming off their only real critical and commercial wobble, 2005’s lovable oddity Get Behind Me Satan, a lot was riding on Jack and Meg’s next album. Their reputation had been knocked by dodgy matador costumes and the disappointment of their 2005 Glastonbury headline set. Turns out you can have too much marimba for Saturday night at Worthy Farm. Who knew? So, back to the drawing board they went. What resulted may, to this day, still be the best synthesis of Jack White’s best assets. His uncompromising weirdness and his ability to rock like an absolute bastard.
The opening title track lets us know exactly where we stand. Over a thudding, ominous verse, White starts howling about American foreign policy before an instrumental chorus heralds in one of the most banging riffs this band has ever concocted. Then, you get the stylophone solo. How this was a number two single on the UK singles chart, behind ‘Umbrella’ no less, is confounding, and the ideas just keep coming for the rest of the album. ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’ and its lemon juice on a papercut guitar solo. ‘300 M.P.H Torrential Outpour Blues’ and its Dylan and The Band grooves. ‘Conquest’ and its Mariachi metal madness. They are a collection of songs that seem destined to fail but somehow succeed.
The first sign of trouble comes with ‘Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn’, a mandolin-led Cèilidh that seems to aim for the long-haired folk of Led Zeppelin III but lands closer to the dwarf-dancing Stonehenge interlude from Spinal Tap. While it’s not entirely awful and brimming with ideas, it veers dangerously into twee territory. Still, it’s not enough to derail the album—at least not yet. That moment comes next, with the horrifying realisation that the following track sticks to the Scottish folk theme but adds spoken word poetry. Instead of evoking poignancy, it feels laughable, albeit unintentionally so.
What is this load of tartan bollocks? It’s ‘St Andrew (This Battle is in The Air)’, and while one might want to give it credit for being unlike most things you’ve heard, the rectal cramp would also need credit for being unlike most things I’ve felt. On any other album, this would be the point where you switch off whatever you’re playing it on and throw it into the sun, but folks, by some miracle, they make it work. They actually make it work in a similar way that Jack White’s recent solo album No Name is the best thing he’s done in a decade and a half.
After years of half-baked “experimentalism” as a way of covering up any actual craft, White cut an album of straight-ahead punk blues, and perhaps it was inspired by how they recovered here. The guitarist turns his amp up to eleven, kicks out the jams and the rest of ‘Icky Thump’ fucks like a plutonium-powered piledriver. ‘Rag & Bone’, ‘Catch Hell Blues’ ‘Little Cream Soda’ are all fire-breathing rockers. ‘I’m Slowly Turning Into You’ is, with a bullet, one of the best things Jack White has ever done, and then the duo guide us home with the wry acoustic strum of ‘Effect And Cause’, a gentle yet wickedly funny warm down that ends the album on a winning note.
It would take a hell of a record to recover from a miss like ‘St Andrew’. Fortunately, that’s exactly what Icky Thump is. It is still a crying shame about the name, though.
