When I think about music during the summer and the different
waves of heat, The White Stripes always ring that stunningly live sound. All
their albums possess a raw, visceral feel (captured mostly through Jack White’s
amazingly brisk production) and they sound gorgeously alive on vinyl. The first
time I came across this band was during their Elephant rise back in 2003 and I
backtracked to their starting music. With De Stijl they truly celebrated their
raw blues/punk/rock fusion and delivered an album simplistically excellent. Dutch
for ‘the style,’ the album features art from that movement of art known for
relishing the simple side of life with use of sole primary colors and basic
shapes; and the Stripes took to that matching music that was undeniably blues
at the core. Dedicated to an architect who created museums and more in Holland,
it was also dedicated to Blind Willie McTell – a blues pioneer from the 1920-40s
– the Stripes know their stuff. It’s also the first record I was able to get by
them and finishing out a long time without a vinyl play, it sounded great all
day today.
With "Apple Blossom" you have your standard blues song that
roughly fine-tunes the edges with a lulling guitar and passive feel. It sounds
like a lost song by Paul McCartney through White’s romantic lyrics. The feel is
truly bluesy with the chords decorating the music’s longing feel. He’s
basically telling her that he’ll take care of her, cure all her problems and to
stop crying because she looks so much better smiling. A diehard Stripes fan
(one of the people who first told me how dynamite they were) told me he thinks
it to be about basically trying to bag a virgin with the male’s domineering
style. I’m not sure about that but I wouldn’t be surprised! Still, simple blues
at it’s finest.
Unlike the aforementioned Elephant, De Stijl won’t feature
the roaring guitar shredding or huge sounds the Stripes most recently made. But
that’s the beauty of the White Stripes, they made a nice round 6 albums in about
8 years and the only time they took breaks was for White to work on another
album or project. They consistently changed up their sound from album to album,
shifting through different styles of blues and rock in a ball of awesomeness.
So each album is a different story, a different style, a different kind of
beauty. Here with “Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me?” they rip through a playful
rhyming pattern to more of a louder sound (White shows off his guitar skill and
grit like a modern day Jimi Hendrix, yes an apt comparison to make) and
perhaps, this is the most charged song on here. Either way, it’s all gold
really. – Bryan
