The White Stripes - 'Under Blackpool Lights' (XL)
4/5
By: Toby L
The White Stripes live. It's a funny one.
After all, for one of the most influential, best-selling and talked-about bands of the '00s to date, they're not really, clearly, 'a band'. Attending their performance is akin to rebirth, a re-discovery of your own personal convention of a concert. The lights are low, occasionally blinding, the sound is dirty and matted, and - visually - the whole thing is sexually arresting in a tense, taut and somehow menacing sense; Jack cowering over two mic-stands, running between the two throughout, usually to face 'sister' Meg, the rest of the time wrestling with a variety of candy-coated, red guitars. It's a brilliant display. Hendrix duelling Cobain, with a whacking great, muddy kit thudding throughout.
Trouble is, document it wrong, and it could look slightly theatrical. Many that will see The White Stripes more than once might liken it to viewing the same play twice - especially when there's only so many dynamics a two-piece can bear, only so many nuances, only so many tricks. And as talented twosomes go, The White Stripes still lead the way, but, truly, seldom shock.
So the fact that one of their iconic efforts has been captured so masterfully, is all the more reassuring. This could have been pantomime, a seemingly contrived, tawdry affair: that 'grainy' film look attempting in earnest to entrap The Stripes in a withering bluster of 'authenticity'. But, inversely, 'Under Blackpool Lights' richly, romantically and timelessly portrays a classic band in a coveted environment (Blackpool's infamous, towering Empress Ballroom), and it feels seminal. The fact it's packaged in a thick plastic casing that could survive a nuclear blast (ever handy in these pressing times) only helps; if the world does explode in the next few months, it's nice to consider this'll be one of the few, fitting time-capsule mementos that Martians can analyse the human-race from. They'll be impressed.
As it's film-time, the Whites ploughed through one of their longer sets, giving it an extra kick up the arse - twenty-six songs; alright with you, bucko? It's both comprehensive and enchanting - a match seldom met.
The untypical entrance of theirs reached in 'When I Hear My Name' is a red herring, for it truly starts with the back-to-back onslaught of a frazzled 'Black Math' and clunking 'Dead Leaves & The Dirty Ground'; inspired. Yet there's a whole myriad of pleasures - 'cos The White Stripes do bear some tunes (the only disarming exclusions are the brittle 'We're Going To Be Friends' and their Joss Stone pastiche rendition of their own 'Fell In Love With A Girl', both performed on the same tour of Jan 2004), and it's difficult to physically sit without inanely fidgeting when the Arabian-blues punk of 'I Think I Smell A Rat' or throbbing frisking of 'The Hardest Button To Button' envelope your home set-up.
The look is faultless - super-8 cameras are all over the Empress, it seems, no angle left uncovered, and the feel is ludicrously warm. Add said-fine performance, ensuing in a faultless two-song close - the marching panache of a glorious, messy 'Seven Nation Army' and blues jam-out 'De Ballit Of De Boll Weevil' - and it's a release that once thought merely enticing is actually quite, quite indispensable. Go relive the past; it's fun.
Artists in this article: The White Stripes
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