Which is the color of my favorite ELEPHANT.
Or was.
My new favorite Elephant is the cd just released cd by White Stripes. When I saw Rolling Stone gave it a virtually unprecedented five star rating, I had to make the trip to Best Buy to get the cd while it was also on sale (also picked up Far From Heaven and Beatles Anthology on dvd).
I won't try to argue or defend RS' rating, but I will say ELEPHANT is an exceptional effort. Jack and Meg White work best when facing constraints and limitation and artistic challenges to be overcome.
WHITE BLOOD CELLS succeeded by accenting the group's strengths as a duo to overcome the spare arrangements with strong songwriting, hooks for days, and blues fueled punk energy, but its popularity coasted somewhat on the novelty factor of a band without a bass player -- a point underscored by the success of the internet distributed bootleg version of the cd, "REDD BLOOD CELLS", featuring Redd Kross' Steven McDonald providing over-dubbed bass parts and vocals. It is also a point Jack and Meg have seemingly taken to heart. ELEPHANT opens with the bass notes of "Seven Nation Army" announcing a restructuring of White Stripe's sound, if not their methodology. The band still held themselves to rigid artistic constraints on this effort. ELEPHANT was recorded in only two weeks on vintage eight-track recording equipment. This challenge has met with results similar to the past. Beyond just trying to cram as much sound as possible into eight ping-ponged tracks (which is hardly ! a creative stretch) the band focuses once again on its strengths, the blusey stomp, the noisy romp, the percussive whomp. I'd be here all day trying to name the highlights. Suffice it to say, this is a disc I readily recommend.