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31Knots Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
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Icky Thump
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Jack and Meg White spent a whopping three weeks (an eternity by White Stripes standards) in Nashville recording their sixth studio album.
| LABEL: | Warner Bros |
| RELEASE DATE: | 19 June 2007 |
| DISCS: | 1 disc |
| GENRE(S): | Indie, Rock |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this album is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 166 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Oligami gave it a6:
It's too much of a slightly above-average thing.
Daniel C. gave it a10:
VERY highly recommended.
Marek K gave it a9:
Very good album to me. I'm not a rock fan, like more jazz stuff, but White Stripes' new album is very strong, even after two weeks listening. I also listened their older stuff and maybe I can understand some of negative comments here. This new album is really different sounding (but best album for me), I like how it lives, it rocks (but not in classical way - this is positive aspect for me). And ... this simple drumming and clear quitar playing is exactly how it sounds good. Most 4-8 people rock bands just sound too messy, too oversounding, too nonnaturally ... White Stripes is simple, its streightforward ... but its not bad I think. Catch Hell Blues, Martyr For My Love For You and Rag and Bones are highlights, maybe Bone Broke is the weakest song here, also I think Conquest is halfly done - its not bad, but I feel, its weakly done. I listen very many styles and really think that White Stripes is not overrated. Maybe to serious rock fans it does just too different sounds.
James H gave it a9:
My favorite stripes album was De Stijl, mainly because I loved the guitar, songs like "Little Bird" even their cover of Son House's "Death Letter" was pretty crazy. But songs like "Bone Broke", "Catch Hell Blues", and "Little Cream Soda" made me love this album. I have trouble listening to it as a whole, like I could with some other albums, but it was worth my money.
Todd W gave it a9:
It cracks me up to read some of the Minicritic reviews concerning the newest offering from the White Stripes. People who appear to be ambivalent about their new offering still manage to find a way to attempt to write the Great American Record Review in its wake. I ashamedly admit to being one of those who, like a cliche hipster with an unearned yet large dose of self-importance, kept this group at arm's length despite two fine albums in White Blood Cells and Elephant. Simply put, Icky Thump is one of the best guitar rock albums of this or any other year. The has-beens in Aeroshit, Immobile Stones, The Who(?), and Van Noiseland need to go to school on these two. Think about it, much of the music on this album is made by just TWO people, and it compares favorably with the best of any guitar rock of any era. If that alone is not enough to give you pause, well, put on your headphones and crank up your so-called classic rock which has been beat beyond dog food on the airwaves of our country. It and you have grown beyond tiresome to the rest of us. Mad props to Meg and Jack for playing anywhere and everywhere in an attempt to get their art before a persnickety public. Elementary classrooms, busses, fishing boats, it doesn't matter; there's not an icky bump in their road. May they keep on rockin'.
Blake T gave it a9:
Possibly Their Best Accept it just lacks the variety of get behind me satan
Brendan D gave it a6:
If I have to hear one more person call Jack White a genius, I might have to puke. That being said, Jack White is a genius (barf). One listen to the way he deftly appropriates pesudo-Celtic music on "Prickly Thorn, Yet Sweetly Worn" and "St. Andrew" will leave you breathless, wishing you were surrounded by the Scottish Highlands or the Northern-Irish Giant's Causeway. The title track is a fun romp through White's typically Zeppelin-meets-Dylan bluesy charade -- nothing new, nothing as deep as "Blue Orchid," but entertaining nonetheless. And "You Don't Know What Love Is" is the best non-freakout song the duo has done since "Hotel Yorba" off their third record. Those four tunes, plus the weird half-song/half-sketch "Rag and Bone," save the album from being a completely rehashed disaster. Seriously. If not for the Celt-inspired tunes in the middle of the record or the two "true" rock tunes that start it off, you'd be reading a very different review. The problem here isn't that the songs aren't any good on their own; they range from decent to brilliant, as I've said. But they don't form a cohesive record. What made "Get Behind Me Satan" work so well was that it committed to the freakout-country mode that Loretta Lynn put Jack into during the recording of "Van Lear Rose." "Elephant" worked because Jack just wanted to do Zeppelin. But on "Icky Thump," he never finds a cohesive message. Listen, for example, to "Conquest," and explain how you get from that to "Prickly Thorn" in a matter of two songs. That might work on the mixtape your little brother made for you before you went away to college because he was just throwing on everything that you might like to listen to on your drive from suburban Seattle to Berkeley; but in the midst of a single record, it seems more jarring for the sake of being jarring, as if Jack's just tossed on a bunch of ideas, rather than molding them into a cohesive work of art, as he's done so deftly before. "Icky Thump" is experimentation for experimentation's sake; and while that's a laudable goal, the end result is, unfortunately, the worst project with which Jack White has ever been associated.
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