Our pick of the albums reviewed on these pages this week is Greatest Hits, the first compilation from The White Stripes – click here to revisit the review and leave your score.
“There was always a weird sort of make believe to The White Stripes, a job lot of superstitions it felt hard to not see as folklore.”
“Jack White’s obsession with the number three; the use of the primary colours red (anger, passion) and white (purity, innocence) in their striking iconography; the righteous noise of the blues filtered through a late twentieth century film of revisionism.”
“The facts are at least mostly clear: John Gillis grew up in a largely Hispanic Detroit neighbourhood, involuntarily listening to his brother’s collection of classic sixties and seventies rock before picking up on the pre-war blues of Son House and Blind Willie McTell.”
“Latterly, he was introduced to oddballs and throwback revivalists The Gun Club and The Cramps by local aficionado Brian Muldoon. Jack met Meg White in a coffee shop in 1991 when they were both 16 and, as the story goes, after they’d moved into his parents’ house together, one day whilst he was practicing guitar Meg slipped behind a conveniently waiting drumkit and subsequently blew his mind.”