Track Listing

1. Icky Thump
2. You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)
3. 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues
4. Conquest
5. Bone Broke
6. Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn
7. St. Andrew (This Battle Is In The Air)
8. Little Cream Soda
9. Rag And Bone
10. I'm Slowly Turning Into You
11. A Martyr For My Love For You
12. Catch Hell Blues
13. Effect and Cause

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1104 in Music
• Released on: 2007-06-19
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
The White Stripes are back with the most bombastic album they've ever produced! While revealing the band's roots in American folk music, Icky Thump is an explosive, revolutionary assault that brings together garage rock, every blues style of the past 100 years, nouveau, and flamenco. This is truly a modern rock and roll masterpiece!

The White Stripes Photos

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Amazon.com
Bagpipes, a song written as the soundtrack to a Michel Gondry music video, Patti Page's musical shadow, and Jack and Meg co-narrating a scavenger's rummages: It must be time for Icky Thump, the many-flavored riposte to 2006's Get Behind Me Satan. The duo starts big with the title track--Jack's fast-tumbling, falsetto-tinged lyrics jagging on hyper keyboard-sounding segues and Meg's pounding drums. They rarely shy from an idea, invoking acoustic Bob Dylan to frame "300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues," but interjecting a series of distortion-laden guitar paroxysms for good measure. The end of Icky, on "Effect and Cause," is where Jack's trademark vocal warble and spare, quick acoustic strums meet Meg's single-minded beats. Everywhere on Icky giant riffs leap and shout, with Flamenco horns and those eerie bagpipes and rhythmic shifts and Jack's impatient vocal kinetics, marking new territories even as the White Stripes again populate them with vintage ideas. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

their worst
I remember when this album was being recorded and they put a clip online of them recording "i'm slowly turning into you", which i thought was a great song and made me really excited about the album coming out. When it came out, i bought it, listened to it twice and was totally disappointed by it.

Today, a year and a bit after listening to it i thought i'd pull it out and listen to it again. My views haven't changed much since then, i still think it's a dull, uninspired affair, but i think if you took off "conquest", "prickly thorn", "st. andrew" and "rag and bone" (throwaway tracks in my opinion) and put better tracks in their place, the album wouldn't be as bad. Yes, there are afew good moments, but all up it's a pretty meh thing which is like a step back for them.

I still think Get Behind Me Satan is their best. While maybe one or two of the songs on GBMS is disposable, most of icky thump is disposable, and only "300mph torrential outpour blues", "little cream soda", "slowly turning into you" and "martyr for my love for you" are salvageable from the messy dullness and fit in the same level of compositional and performance quality (not so much technical skill as energy and emotion) of Get Behind Me Satan.

The album also sounds rushed, like they didn't have time to even finish writing the songs (despite the fact that the press release said "this was the longest time the white stripes ever spent recording an album") white blood cells, which was recorded in 3 days still has more cohesion and awesome songs than this, despite the fact that most of the songs WERE unfinished (or barely finished - i remember reading that Meg didn't feel as though they should have recorded WBC so soon after writing the tracks with barely any time to practice or fix them) and for icky thump they just pulled out some riffs and melody lines that they had used before. The second track has snatches of melody line from "i'm lonely but i ain't that lonely yet" and sounds like a ripoff of both "dead leaves and the dirty ground" and "there's no home for you here". I found that especially irritating.

I think Jack White has lost abit of that songwriting magic that made the white stripes good. Hopefully their next album won't be this bad.

to summarise icky thump:
4 really bad tracks which they should have replaced
5 uninspired meh tracks with not much going for them
4 white stripes quality tracks, up there with GBMS or elephant.

Not their best.
For me, the White Stripes can do no wrong. And while they didn't do wrong with Icky Thump, they didn't do their best either. If I had to choose a couple cuts to recommend, I'd pick "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "Effect and Cause."

White Stripes - Ickythumped
I wanted to write an article about the White Stripes since their release last year 2007, Ickythump, but didn't have the inspiration until now.

The White Stripes, Meg and Jack White are a Alternative rock group out of Detroit Michigan, which formed back in 1997. They originally portrayed themselves as a sister and brother duo, when in fact they were married for a period of time at the beginning of their careers. Even after their divorce, the band has remarkably still stayed together.

The White Stripes use a do-it-yourself, low fidelity approach to recording songs, using a very raw, minimalist simplicity of composition and arrangement primarily inspired by early punk rock, and blues. Personally as a newer fan of White Stripes, I have grown to appreciate their stripped down, Lo-Fi primal sound. Furthermore, their playfulness and general quirkiness make the albums never too heavy or too bizarre for mainstream listeners. With their newest album Ickythump, the Stripes have returned to this analog, scratchy, Detroit garage rock sound after their experimental departure with their 2005 release 'Get Behind Me Satan,' and its piano based pop. However even though Ickythump is a return to earlier styles, it seems more over produced then previous recordings since this is their first and only release with Warner Bros.

It was pointed out to me that Jack White has an obssession with the number three with his recordings, and live performances. As stated on Wikipedia: "Jack has emphasized the significance that the number three holds for the band, citing it as inspiration not only for their tri-colored uniforms (red, white, black), but their pared-down approach to what he considers the three elements of song: storytelling, melody and rhythm. The number three also frequently appears in White Stripes' album artwork, and texts written by Jack, such as liner notes or messages written on the band's website, are often signed with "Jack White III" or simply "III". There are also only three sounds--drums, guitar and vocals--in most of their songs; sometimes keyboard or piano is substituted for guitar." The one thing which I found interesting in Ickythump is that his supposed rule of Three wasn't as honored as previously in other albums. In songs such as 'St. Andrew(The Battle is in the Air)' the recording has bagpipes, raging guitar, drums, and Meg White all churning together at the same time - the additional layers which lend to making the track sound more lush and full also detracts from the White Stripes' strict regimented style of three-is-best.

After writing an article about Death Cab for Cutie and the lyrical genius of Ben Gibbard, it is a bit of let down to come to Jack White's lyrics. Jack White's lyrics are not profound or deep, however they do showcase the playful, ramshackle style that the White Stripes have become so famous and loved for. Lyrcially the songs that stood out strongest for me were the albums title track 'Ickythump' and the folksy 'Effect and Cause.' The song Ickythump deals with the topic of immigration, and criticized America's current stance on immigration policy, as such the song is the first political song which the White Stripes have put out since "The Big Three Killed My Baby," off The White Stripes (1999), the bands debut album. The defining point of the song comes when Jack White states:
"White Americans What? Nothin' better to do?"
"Why don't you kick yourself out? You're an immigrant too."
"Who's using who? What should we do?"
"Well you can't be a pimp And a prostitute too."

The whole song with its abrasive guitars leaves the whole question of the immigration debate uncomfortably unresolved; lyrically and musically.

With Jack's marriage to British model Karen Elson and in a dedication to his own Scottish heritage, the White Stripes showcase a mini-suite with 'Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn', and 'St. Andrew(The Battle is in the Air)'. The two tracks on the album are a a nice homage to his roots with soaring bag pipes, and raucous drums, which sounds strangely like Led Zeppelin and 'The Battle of Evermore.' Unfortunately, to a lot of hard core White Stripes fans these tracks may come across as alien and a radical change from their previous song stylings, but I found them entertaining and to be strong tracks in the middle of the album.

Another stand out track was their rendition of Patti Page's 1950's song 'Conquest' which was originally written by Corky Robbins. The song originally was a 50's song jump blues tune about the battle of the sexes, which the White Stripes turn into a raging garage rock bullfight, complete with dramatic mexican trumpets, and malaguena guitar riffs. Their new rendition takes the tune to a more darker place than the original.

Even though I am not an over the top fan for the White Stripes, I can appreciate and respect their spontaneous tempo shifts, their song dynamics, and their prog rock influences - which abound on this album. People have pointed out that this is easily the White Stripes loudest, in your face album, and at first it was hard to digest, but after a few listens it does grow on you.

-Andrew D.B. Joslyn
Music Musings
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