Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 12: The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan (2005)
A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME! Also, some albums just REALLY suit the format, right
Shh! But I’ll tell you something. I kinda like The White Stripes (again). I’m whispering it, not because I’m embarrassed to like them — I’m not embarrassed to like anything (really) but when it comes to Jack White, I haven’t always been that kind.
And the internet always remembers. I have a love/hate thing going on, it’s more complex than that even. I’ve always admired what The White Stripes set out to be, what they achieved, and how they knocked it on the head when they did. I’ve loved Meg White’s simple drumming, then not liked it at all (or more to the point, laughed at people raving about her, seemingly without context) and then I’ve liked it all over again. I always saw it — and her — as the key ingredient. Jack might have been the one doing all the things, writing, singing, conceiving, producing, etc — but it wouldn’t have worked, wouldn’t have meant anything without her. And the role she played. Such a foil.
I’ve largely ignored White’s solo career and post-White Stripes things, although the odd “Supergroup” and individual recording has been hard to ignore, and some of them I’ve really enjoyed too. But The White Stripes are on my mind a lot now — and yet for a decade or so I couldn’t stand to think about them, much less listen to them.
The silver bullet in all of this — the sneaky weapon — has always been the band’s fifth album. I loved it when I first heard it. And even at my peak of thinking I possibly hated The White Stripes, I liked Get Behind Me Satan. How could you not, with the experimentation, and instrumentation — still so raw and simple and nearly rushed in places. But less overtly blues-pinching and garage rock-aping.
I loved the first couple of White Stripes albums as soon as I heard them. I loved the cover versions, and some of the originals. And then, of course, by the time of 2003’s Elephant they were everywhere. And we all knew Seven Nation Army which might not even be much of a song, but still stands mighty as a riff.
What I immediately loved (and still love) about Satan is the way White found other musical voices.
Hell, My Doorbell felt like what I wanted to hear from Elton John, if anything! So it was nice to just feel that, rather than thinking of Jack White and the White Stripes as the ones that cut the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s lunch.
The songs often feel like excuses to hang experimentation across, but only ever in the very best way.
This is the sort of record you can like, without knowing anything about the band, without seeking out anything else they would go on to do, or might have made before it. I could never have that luxury with The White Stripes but when I listen to this now I try to imagine it as a single record by a one-off band. It feels a whole more important, and profound that way. I wonder if, to the hardcore fans, this one is possibly the outlier? I hope so. Much as it doens’t matter at all, I think I’d really like that to be the case.
When the album was about to be released, I was working in music retail, managing a store still. I must have been just about to wrap that up for good. But I was invited along to a listening party where we heard the album in its entirety before it was released to the public. And they gave us special promo copies of the album — on vinyl.
I kept my copy for years, never opened it, and then eventually sold it on TradeMe. I think I got $200 for it. Or something like that. I might have got more if I’d put it on eBay.
I was given a copy on CD a few months ago — and I’ve been playing the album more in 2024 than I ever did in any year apart from 2005/6.
At one point I did own every White Stripes album. I flogged them all pretty quickly. But I’ll probably scoop up one or two more, because even I don’t quite believe myself when I say that I’d love to imagine this as the only album by this band ever. That’s just an interesting framing for when you listen to it. But it can never be the truth, because it took the self-titled debut, De Stijl, White Blood Cells, and Elephant for this record to react to. And the Icky Thump that would follow, a couple of years later (my other favourite White Stripes album, I think?) was in its way, then, a reaction to this.
But as much as I never quite believe Jack White, my single biggest problem with him/his music (he’s acting, he’s a pantomime-player, it’s cosplay of a kind), I got close to believing that he might have meant Get Behind Me Satan. And that’s big. I think about that every time I listen to this. He’s either pulled the wool right over my eyes here. Or his own. Possibly both.
