6. Broken Bricks
Out of key singing, chords so stiff you can hear the bounce, and is Meg White just jingling keys at certain points? Possibly, but who cares, the stripes show up with more swing than you can shake a stick at, and when meg was potentially playing with actual sticks. Jack channels his inner Springsteen and tells a tale of blue-collar revelry and the man crushing the souls of another family.
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“broke into the window panes just a rusty colored rain that drives a man insane you try to jump over water but you land in oil climb the ladder up a broken crane. Don't go to the broken bricks girl it's not a place that you want to be think of the spot your father spent his life demolition calls it Building C”
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7. Rag and Bone
“This place is like a mansion, its like a mansion, look at all this stuff!” And so is this song. The stripes go grifting and come up with enough jump to remind you that bands never used to have to harvest 80’s **** synth to come up with a song people could get down to. Its hard to determine here if the stripes sound more like hobos, carnies, or used car salesmen but the slime that’s all over them in this one is very much their own, which despite all the comparisons is more than you can say for Zeppelin. Who knows, maybe its some amalgamate of all four.
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“Well can't you hear we're selling rag and bone? Bring out your junk and we'll give it a home a broken trumpet or a telephone”
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8. Instinct Blues
An unfinished song from an unfinished disc. Too simple and too obvious for any real fan to appreciate, and any non-fan to get. The Beauty of this one lives in its tortured bends and non-sequetir breakdowns. You can feel the grime build on you after this ones over.
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“And all the chickens get it and them singing canaries get it. Whoo! Even strawberries get it I want you to get with it”
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9. Death Letter
If the Stripes style wasn’t enough of a clue, Jack White ****ing loves Son House, so much so that he covers this throwback gem with notes so distant you’d think it was coming from House himself. Jack always did have the fine fingered knowledge to have those amps throw as much pain as the electric would allow and here he doesn’t let up an inch. The guitar work here might be too beautiful to describe.
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“I gat a letter this mornin’ what do you rekon it read, it said the girl you love is dead”
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10. Hotel Yorba
A simple country swing that will make you tap your foot while dreaming of rolling down the open roads of the Midwest. Yorba, given its prominence for allegedly once housing the Fab Four when they visited the blossoming metropolis of Detroit [sic], lets the words do all the fancy talking with Jack telling us the problems of modern life when you’re just trying to love your woman. And really, whats more country than that?
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“I been thinking of a little place down by the lake they got a dirty little road leading up to the house I wonder how long it will take till we're alone sitting on the front porch of that home stomping our feet on the wooden boards never gonna worry about locking the door”
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11. Jolene
Dolly Parton might have had it first, but she lacked the vicious lashes of distortion that express the torture of rolling in your bed wide awake at four in the morning with all the demons thrashing in your head, and your man whispering someone else’s name.
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”he talks about you in his sleep and there is nothing I can do to keep from crying when he calls your name, Jolene”
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12. Hello Operator
If the opening riff of this one doesn’t speak to you, you might lack a soul. With infections fills that mandate air guitar, and senseless stick clicking on megs behalf, its hard not to bob to this one.
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“Find a canary a bird to bring my message home carry my obituary my coffin doesn’t have a phone”
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13. Union Forever
Written while Jack tried learning a song in Citizen Cane, this brought the stripes into their first legal battle. But what might have been taken from the film is irrelevant, the haunting over drone that creeps in from behind will give you that “someones behind you” feeling on the neck every time.
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“With wealth and fame, he's still the same I'll bet you five you're not alive If you don't know his name.”
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