The White Stripes – ‘Elephant’
It’s a wild way to make an opening statement. After three studio albums filled with a potent mix of garage punk and pure blues, The White Stripes had entered the upper echelon of the indie rock world that was on the ascent in the early 2000s. For most bands, this was where the first stumbling block comes into play. But then again, most bands didn’t have ‘Seven Nation Army’ coming in hot to lead their first album where everyone was watching.
Elephant is a coronation. After helping to revitalise interest in rock and roll with their 2001 LP White Blood Cells, there was a massive amount of hype and expectation around whatever The White Stripes did next. The first wave of American indie rock was burning its last embers while the UK branch was on the verge of exploding. It was a time when superstardom was there to grab for just about anyone. It was just a matter of who got there first. Elephant, not surprisingly, made The White Stripes the victors.
‘Seven Nation Army’ is one of those songs that makes you wonder what it was like hearing it for the first time. For generations of music fans, ‘Seven Nation Army’ might not actually be a song by The White Stripes’; instead, it’s that insistent football chant or stadium sing-along that has always been in existence. It’s the biggest bass line of the 21st century, and it doesn’t even come from a bass (Jack White tried to play up his aversion to modern technology, but a DigiTech Wammy pedal proved otherwise).
The power of ‘Seven Nation Army’ threatens to overshadow the rest of Elephant, but if you never make it past the iconic first track, you’ll miss a full album’s worth of experimentation, acoustic folk, overdubbed choirs, classic tracks, and hardened lore-filled blues. Elephant is the one White Stripes album that has everything that makes the band great, evenly distributed across 14 tracks.
‘Black Math’ brings the band’s punk roots back to the fore, with both Jack and Meg White gleefully blasting away at their respective instruments. ‘There’s No Home For You Here’ immediately changes course from the stripped-back arrangement of ‘Black Math’, gathering together anywhere from five to ten Jack Whites to create a vocal chorus spanning three octaves. Underneath it all is a chord progression that recalls White Blood Cells‘ ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’.
Jack’s penchant for off-kilter covers (see his love of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’) returns with a version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself. When kicks the track into its B section, White strains at the top of his vocal range to keep up, welcoming in the ragged edge that proved that The White Stripes were never too cool to let it all hang loose. White’s approach to production hits a new level on Elephant, with a greater number of overdubs and studio gloss applied to the album’s tracks than any of their previous LPs.
That grandiose sound immediately gets subverted with ‘In The Cold, Cold Night’. Featuring a rare lead vocal turn from Meg White. As always, White’s drumming is as powerful as it is simple on Elephant. Allowing plenty of space for Jack to get weird and wild but always bringing her distinctive thump, Meg White plays exactly what each respective song needs, whether it’s a full-on assault in ‘Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine’, a gentle tambourine on ‘Well It’s True That We Love One Another’, or absolutely nothing on ‘You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket’.
The latter song investigates Jack’s obsession with the way men and women use each other in strange and occasionally destructive ways. The rapid switch between pleading earnestness in ‘I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart’ to the overprotective sheltering of ‘You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket’ investigate the opposite ends of the love spectrum, with White able to play both roles to understated perfection.
The duo decide to place two of the album’s most memorable songs, not named ‘Seven Nation Army, ‘ back to back with ‘Ball and Biscuit’ and ‘The Hardest Button to Button’. The former is a major piece of Jack White’s obsession with third men and the number three (later resurrecting the term for his record company, Third Man Records), busting out some of the purest blues that The White Stripes ever made. The latter angles the band back into garage rock, busting out a killer riff and a driving beat that are impossible to ignore.
The album then throws down its most experimental track, ‘Little Acorns’. Repurposing a self-help monologue by Detroit’s own Mort Crim, the track comes accompanied by a staggering instrumental that flips between discordant piano and punk rock power chords before Jack White enters echoing Crim’s sentiments through his own distorted worldview. As if he’s aware that the band might have ventured out too far, White brings it back to basic punk with ‘Hypnotize’, sub-two minute burst of potent indie rock raucousness. Meg’s wild flam hits during the song’s breakdown a signature part of her style and gives the song its unwieldy power.
‘The Air Near My Fingers’ is another chance for White to try out his keyboard skills on record. The ending couplet of ‘Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine’ and ‘It’s True That We Love One Another’ show off the band’s diverse abilities, going from barely-contained punk mania to an acoustic campfire sing-along with British singer Holly Golightly. Neither sounds like it’s outside the capabilities of the Whites, whore crash and careen their way through as many sound, tempo, and dynamic changes as they can muster up.
What Elephant proved beyond a doubt was that The White Stripes, with just two people, were capable of a wider range of sounds than most of their rock and roll counterparts. Jack White’s interest in everything from blues to folk pushed the band’s music to the far-out reaches of rock, but Meg White’s straightforward rhythms brought them back to earth and grounded their signature sound. By the time the pair regrouped for their next album, Jack would push them to even more exotic sounds on Get Behind Me Satan.
If you’re searching for the most classic of The White Stripes’ albums, it’s hard to get much more distinctive and unique than Elephant. A 14-song romp through everything that makes the band great, it would wind up being The White Stripes’ final release before embracing increasingly experimental sounds and, eventually, closing up shop entirely. If you want to hear The White Stripes at the height of their powers, Elephant is that first stop.
