The best thing about 2003’s Elephant was that it was a near perfect celebration of 70s hard rock, paying homage without simply emulating, delivering rock in its purest form. The downside was that it really didn’t stretch out beyond hard rock and garage influences. Get Behind Me Satan is just the opposite. It stretches further, but lacks the punch of Elephant’s purity.
The new album isn’t a complete departure from Elephant. The fat multi-tracked guitar of “Blue Orchid” gets things off to the same start that the heavy, heavy “Seven Nation Army” did on the last album. It’s not quite as interesting, but it has the same knock-you-down-and-kick-you blast. “Instict Blues” has the same Led Zep ebb and flow of energy that “Ball and Biscuit” did, except, once again it’s not quite as strong. They return to the Zeppelin well again for “Red Rain” with similar success. “The Denial Twist” is boogie that rocks on piano as much as it could ever hope to on guitar. Once again, it’s nothing that they hadn’t done before, but this one does come a little closer to the quality on Elephant.
On other stongs, they stretch out a bit more, emcompassing broader influences. Jack and Meg are feeling the soul on “My Doorbell,” taking the essence of R&B and playing it like kids in a garage, much like their Detroit forefather Mitch Ryder did some 40 years ago. “Forever for Her (is Over for Me)” is a sugar-coated 60s pop song with that same dark undercurrent that helps those songs stand up over time. The White Stripes give old-time country a shot on “Little Ghost” as if they’d played with Charlie Poole, not just heard of him. With marimba and maracas as principle instruments, you’d think “The Nurse” would be an upbeat, Latin-inflected piece, but it’s dark and downright creepy (and perhaps a tad long since at 3:47 it feels like 5:00+). “As Ugly as I Seem” is a hippie folk song that finds itself somewhere between “Jane Says” and “Sympathy.” They tie up any loose ends with the quiet, but passionate, gospel-tinged blues of “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t that Lonely Yet).” It’s tracks like this that make it evident that Jack White as a songwriter and both of them as performaers must have a tremendous breadth to their musical experience. And that is the real seed of greatness.
Get Behind Me Satan doesn’t quite live up to the near-perfection of Elephant, but to its credit, it doesn’t try to. Rather than resting on their laurels, the White Stripes continue to search all the backroads of music most of us have long since forgotten. Also to their credit, they don’t just reiterate what they find. They reconstruct it in their own garage-band-from-Detroit sorta way.
There is one other point I want to make that isn’t related only to this album, but to their work as a whole. Jack White is the obvious creative force in the band, so it seems that Meg’s contribution is often overlooked, but that’s unfortunate. She takes a plodding style and turns it into a strength that gives the music power and drive. Very few drummers, even with vastly superior technical skills, are able to do that.
Rating: 9/10