The White Stripes - New York Roselands - 18/11/03
5/5
By: Joshua K
Set-List: 'Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground', 'Black Math', 'I Think I Smell A Rat/Take A Whiff On Me', 'When I Hear My Name', 'Jolene', 'I Fought Piranhas', 'Let's Build A Home', 'I Wanna Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother's Heart', 'Death Letter/Grinning In Your Face', 'Cannon/Making Whoopee', 'In The Cold Cold Night', 'Same Boy You've Always Known', 'Hotel Yorba', 'God Makes No Mistakes', 'Wasting My Time', 'Small Faces', 'We're Going To Be Friends', 'Offend In Every Way', 'This Protector', 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself', 'Hardest Button To Button', 'Ball & Biscuit', ENCORE, 'Fell In Love With A Girl', 'Screwdriver', 'Seven Nation Army'.
Prior to the madness, rockfeedback have been fans of The White Stripes for a long while. Therefore, you can understand our disappointment when their last New York show (as held this past April) so underwhelmed... and why we eagerly awaited this return engagement, delayed from July by Jack White's infamous finger surgery.
Well, one could argue that their forced time out from touring actually did the band well. It provided a chance to disappear from the instant and immense 'album of year/decade/century' pressures that accompanied the release of the 'Elephant' LP, and alleviated the urge to stack the set-list with those songs at the expense of earlier, equally fine moments.
On this gig's evidence, Jack and Meg must agree. For tonight, New York, The White Stripes have come back to triumph - tightly, loudly, consistently - again discovering how to drown out the hype and make it all about the music, which they play like their very lives depend on it. (It's telling their only words to us tonight are a 'Hello' seven songs in and 'Thank you's' at the end.)
So, standard opener 'Dead Leaves...' and 'Black Math' roar and soar like the Zep-inspired monsters they are, before careering into a corrosive, distorted 'I Think I Smell A Rat' and an inspired 'When I Hear My Name'. 'Let's Build A Home', with its stuttering guitar solo, provides all the evidence we need that Jack's hand is fully recovered, later confirmed again by the amazing string of brief improv. riffs he drops between the main line during 'Hardest Button To Button'. Meg, meanwhile, hits her highpoints with frantic pounding during 'Death Letter' and deliriously throbbing kick-drum on main set-closer 'Ball & Biscuit'.
After this last song, the band departs, leaving Jack's guitar lying on the ground, itself still humming with a drilling, distorted resonance. They quickly return for the encore - kicking off with a rare airing of 'Fell In Love With A Girl', completely reworked into a sparse, slow stomp that shifts into triple-time for the chorus. 'Screwdriver', on the other hand, is ferocious throughout, again confirming why it's one of The Stripes' best tracks. It's followed by a closing, strobe-enhanced jam through 'Seven Nation Army' that finally leaves us deaf, dumb and spent.
And intriguingly, there's no 'Boll Weevil' tonight, unfortunately - the band's classic signifier that they've thoroughly enjoyed a show. That's all right, Jack. You can find an abode with us any time.
Artists in this article: The White Stripes
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