Striped for action: Meg and Jack onstage at the Wireless Festival in June. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
The White Stripes' Icky Thump album has clarified their magnetic appeal for me and I advise any young band that doesn't want to fade after two records to take heed. Before I continue, let me say that I do not believe this album is without flaws. While finding the Scotch-flavoured Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn pleasantly diverting, my nerves were severely tested by the Flamenco-style song Conquest. When an album is recorded in two to three weeks, however, a few slips are permissible. And any annoyance that may be caused by such songs is rendered irrelevant when they appear on an album which also includes songs like Icky Thump, Little Cream Soda, and Catch Hell Blues. The later in particular is astounding in its capacity to seize you by the ears, rattle your nervous system, exhilarate and excite. Every White Stripes record has at least two or three songs that carry such a punch. They are songs which are immediately engaging and possess energy and imagination enough to leave you feeling slightly shaken by what you have heard. Let's face it, if you gave most successful, contemporary rock bands two weeks in the studio to come up with something thrilling you would be in for a sore disappointment. I dare say that in most cases the results would be bloody awful. Take a listen to the bands that were initially lumped in with the White Stripes as part of a supposed revival of garage-rock. Listen to the current representatives of what is apparently stripped, no-nonsense rock'n'roll. What most of it amounts to is highly polished, slavish imitation of a handful of 70s bands. That such cack-handed and regressive efforts should be met as some kind of renaissance for rock music (as was suggested by the last instalment of the BBC's Seven Ages of Rock) is a total disgrace. To contest that bands like the Kaiser Chiefs constitute a surge of inspirational rock music is a travesty against which I suspect even the most mawkish of teenagers would hold grave reservations.
