Month: May 2015

186. Jason Collett, Here’s to Being Here (2008)

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It’s almost hard to believe that a Broken Social Scene alumni is responsible for as agreeable an Americana record as Here’s to Being Here. It’s not that I take issue with Broken Social Scene — it’s just that BSS are, well, weird. They make weird music. This Jason Collett record swims agreeably alongside Americana and folk-rock, two genres largely ill-equipped to handle weirdness. The Jakob Dylan five o’clock shadow and lumberjack flannel adorning his profile on the cover of Here’s to Being Here aren’t red herrings — the Jason Collett of this record is an earthy, middle-America singer-songwriter in the vein of Petty or Dylan. Except, you know, Canadian.

Essentially a Traveling Wilbury twenty years too late, Collett’s influences are on his sleeve from jump street — opener “Roll On Oblivion” signals that from the introduction of it’s rolling, insistent guitar lick, confirms it with the introduction of Collett’s pinched, nasal vocal. King Bob isn’t the only musical touchstone here, nor does Collett possess his tendency for a winding, journeyman lyric; “Papercut Hearts” is pure Petty in mid-tempo rocker mode, the lovely, loping “Henry’s Song” sounds like Rufus Wainwright covering The Beatles, and “No Redemption Song” could’ve been a Jim Croce b-side.

If it all sounds like more of a retro lark than a cohesive album, that’s because it is. Here’s to Being Here reinvents nothing, breaks no new ground, and has feet firmly planted in the ’70s. That said, it’s a very authentic sounding, exceptionally tuneful record, and when Collett hits his stride with his best melodies, it’s an absolute gas. “Through the Night These Days”, with its honey-coated backing vocals and four-on-the-floor beat is addictive, no-frills country-pop-rock (I think of The Jayhawks, for some reason); “Nothing to Lose” recalls America’s galloping dustbowl folk with an ascending note on the chorus that charmingly flits out of tune at the top; and Jason attains actual pathos with the extra-pretty “Somehow”, a reverent apology married to an acoustic ballad.

It’s impeccably crafted from top to bottom, and if Collett’s artistic identity sounds a lot like a mix-’em’-up of other peoples’ artistic identities, he’s at least got the chops to make it work. Here’s to Being Here is one of the best ’70s folk-rock albums of the 2000s; these songs are not to be missed.

Playlist Track: “Through the Night These Days”

187. Shakira, Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1 (2005)

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Maybe sometimes it takes a language barrier to truly appreciate a great pop album.

I’ll back up. In 2005, Columbian singer Shakira was hardly the most offensive figure in pop; in fact, the hits from her English-language breakthrough Laundry Service were perfectly palatable slices of Latin crossover pop, at a time when that subgenre was often patently ridiculous. (“She Bangs”, anyone?) Those singles still never did anything to suggest that I’d ever cherish a Shakira record — sometimes life takes you to unexpected places, because ten years later, here I am, touting the merits of Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1, Shakira’s return to Spanish-language music after Laundry.

And it is a delightful, textured, diverse pop record, and I’m convinced that I enjoy it as much as I do because I don’t speak Spanish and therefore don’t understand a word of it. Consider that Shakira released Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 in the same year; while the album wasn’t a one-for-one English-language translation of the first installment, the songs that did transfer over fell flat for me once I understood her. It’s not that her lyrics are particularly bad; it’s just that there’s a dusky magnetism to a lot of Fijacion‘s songs that simply retain an air of mystery, and writing everything out breaks the spell.

From the mystic, beguiling opener “En Tus Pupilas” to the passionate rasp of “Lo Imprescindible”, Shakira wails all over this thing — sounding beautifully untethered in her native tongue — over a bed of varied, genre-defying tracks. “Dia Especial” could be a mid-period Jewel song (think “Standing Still” era) with its mid-tempo shuffle and folksy chord changes; “Dia de Enero” is an endearing little acoustic ballad; Shakira digs into slow-burn torch songs with “La Pared” and “No”, B-52s-style rock with “Escondite Ingles”, reggaeton with “La Tortura”, and pumping Euro-disco with “Las de la Intuicion”.

And if you’re not a Spanish speaker, part of the joy of Shakira’s performance here is thrilling to her best vocal moments; her remarkably expressive voice sounds great here, conveying desperation when it cracks in the chorus of “La Pared”, devotion when it slips into a heady falsetto in “Dia de Enero”, or simple rock-chick cool when it powers through the chorus of “Escondite Ingles”.

Fijacion Oral is a top-flight pop album, through and through. Varied, melodic, and impeccably performed, it’s a Shakira album that you should own, which is a sentence you may not have thought you’d hear today.

Playlist Track: I’m going with “Escondite Ingles”, which is too gamely silly to dislike.

188. Jesse Malin, Glitter in the Gutter (2007)

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Jesse Malin makes me feel like I should be more cynical.

He’s one of those singer-songwriters that I feel like I’ve missed the boat on. Like Mew, he’s an artist that essentially exists in a vacuum for me: for some reason, I know nothing of Malin’s work outside of his third record, Glitter in the Gutter, despite the fact that popular opinion thinks far more highly of his debut The Fine Art of Self-Destruction. (And by “for some reason”, I mean “I read somewhere that this record had a Springsteen feature on it”.)

And make no mistake, Glitter is vastly uncool. It’s all workaday rock that vaguely falls under the Ryan Adams “Americana/Rock” umbrella, Malin spinning romanticized yarns about young, exuberantly dumb kids with an affected, nasal tone. It’s entirely earnest, without a hint of irony; even when he salutes his heroes The Replacements with a piano-ballad, torch-song take on “Bastards of Young”, he sounds so sincere that he actually kind of sells the thing.

Perhaps that’s what resonates with me about Glitter in the Gutter: the unwavering sincerity. It’s rarely the lyrical content, because some of Malin’s phrasing falls clunky. Consider “Black Haired Girl”, which whips out what should be a dead-in-the-water couplet, “baby let’s take a ride, just like Bonnie and Clyde” and sells it because it sounds like such a genuine paean to some mythical raven-haired temptress that you can’t help but buy in. The giddy, chugging “Prisoners of Paradise” is basically perfect power-pop — the kind his revered ‘Mats would gladly co-sign, I think — and even though we’ve heard it earlier in the record with “In the Modern World”, both tracks are high-functioning, sugar-addled nuggets.

When he drops the tempo, Malin seems to echo his other hero, Mr. Bruce Springsteen; “Lucinda” may be a tribute to the Divine Miss Williams, alt-country goddess extraordinaire, but it’s mid-tempo shuffle recalls a Brooooce deep cut, with honeyed harmonies from someone who sounds suspiciously like Patti Scialfa. “Don’t Let Them Take You Down (Beautiful Day)” even sounds like something Bruce would’ve dropped on one of his late-’00s records — in fact, it would’ve sounded gangbusters on Magic — down to the subtle harmonies and the inventively-deployed minor chords.

It’s all a gamely tuneful rock record full of singalong choruses, and one I would have grooved to even if Bruce had never stopped by. Fortunately, he does, contributing a verse and gruff harmonies to “Broken Radio”, a soulful, slow-burn piano rocker that is easily the best thing here; it’s in these moments, singing with and co-signed by his mentor, that Jesse Malin sounds like the great singer-songwriter that (according to the internet) the rest of his discography agrees he is. Perhaps it’s never on the level of genius that much of this list is, but Glitter in the Gutter feels like instant nostalgia, a wistful and sweet pop-rock album with hooks to spare.

Playlist Track: I mean, come on, it’s “Broken Radio”. If you don’t get goosebumps when Bruce’s harmonies come in, I don’t get you.

189. Coheed and Cambria, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (2003)

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According to the internets, I’m not supposed to like Coheed and Cambria very much. Nobody’s supposed to, apparently — they’re some sort of emo band masquerading unsuccessfully as metalheads, and Claudio Sanchez’s voice is annoying, and the band’s whole… thing is pretentious and thoroughly insufferable.

This is a mindset that I actually kind of bought into for a while. Somewhere around the time In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth‘s first single “A Favor House Atlantic” broke big, I decided I wanted nothing to do with Sanchez’s helium-addled yelp or chugging power chords. When I found out, a couple years later, that each Coheed record was a new chapter in a multi-character, universe-spanning, multimedia space rock opera-cum-graphic novel, and that each song was not merely a song, but another piece of the puzzle in Coheed’s increasingly intricate worldbuilding… oddly enough, still not interested. This was a new frontier of nerddom that I was ill-prepared to broach.

Joke’s on me, then. Turns out that Coheed are every bit as gloriously geeky as that last paragraph would suggest, and they’re also insanely melodic and technically proficient to boot. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth made the list, but in truth, it could be any of the band’s records. At some point in the 2000s, this brand of dramatic, ambitious pop-prog became exactly what I never knew I needed.

Confession: I’ve never followed the story that Coheed’s records purportedly tell. In truth, it’s not necessary. I’m not saying it’s not edifying or fun to do so; I’m saying that unpacking the reams of dense mythology that Coheed unspool with each successive release isn’t crucial to enjoying the music. Perhaps one day I will; I’ll sort all the tracks into chronological order and buy the graphic novels and spread them out on my bed like I did with my Batman comics when I was an adolescent and pick apart the lengthy character list and align plot points with songs and it’ll be a grand time. Until then, though… do I need to wind my way through a narrative to enjoy a power-pop song as pure as “Blood Red Summer”, to wail along with that massive chorus or to pump my fist to the dissonant cheerleader chants that float in and out? What about “A Favor House Atlantic, with those keening harmonies in the “bye bye beautiful” coda or those push-and-pull power chords in the hook? How about the “Camper Velorium” song suite, particularly “Faint of Heart”, decorated with falsetto-ed “koo-koo-kachoo”s and an unexpectedly tender chorus from Claudio?

Coheed’s powerfully melodic songwriting prowess remains their ace in the hole, each successive chorus reaching new highs. “Three Evils (Embodied in Love and Shadow)” is straight up pop-punk, while “Al the Killer”‘s big, cavernous hook grasps for Maiden-esque metal transcendence. With melodies like this, all the narrative bells and whistles become secondary — Coheed isn’t just a band for Coheed nerds, they’re a band for people who enjoy big, theatrical music.

So count me in: I can’t resist music this massive. Call me a nerd if you must. I’ll blast “A Favor House Atlantic”, the very track that led me to dismiss Coheed in the first place, with a flourish of my cape and my tiny fists airborne. Good eye, sniper.

Playlist Track: “Blood Red Summer”

190. My Morning Jacket, It Still Moves (2003)

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More and more, I can’t help but notice that I often prefer modern bands that fetishize classic rock to actual classic rock (see also: The Hold Steady). The Hold Steady and their appropriation of Springsteen breaks and Stones-esque blues riffs, Jack White‘s incessant revamping of all things ancient, and now My Morning Jacket’s stoned country-rock by way of Neil Young and Crazy Horse; I’m a bit of a sucker for these backwards-leaning revisionists, aren’t I?

No matter — the DNA of My Morning Jacket’s major-label debut might betray strands of Neil’s high, reedy vocals and his band’s slow, reverb-ed thump, but the music inhabits a peculiar space all its own. It’s classic, yes, it feels vintage, but listen closely and you’ll hear bits of Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev — every great indie-rock band of the past couple of decades, really. Which makes sense, because My Morning Jacket have built up an oeuvre that slots itself neatly next to that of any of their contemporaries. It Still Moves is the record that made the world take notice, and for good reason.

First up: Jim James’ voice. Consider “One Big Holiday” — the closest thing to a flagship composition in the band’s entire repertoire — which already hits every possible musical pleasure center with its protracted, arpeggiated intro before James even howls one note. In the empty space between the flurried barre chords of the verse riff, he doesn’t so much sing the opening phrase “waking up good and limber” as he attacks it, clamping down with panache and unbridled joy. Or take acoustic closer “One in the Same”, where James has the listener hooked from note one, unleashing the full naked power of his crisp tenor. Or take the entirety of the album, really — James reaches the rafters frequently, but the power doesn’t lie only in his ability. It’s his ability to fill the empty space — It Still Moves clocks in at an extraordinarily long 72 minutes, and the band fills the space, but with such groove-oriented brio that Jim’s voice seems to slip in between the cracks, creating a lovely dichotomy of instrument and voice.

The band behind James is no slouch either. In their sideways reinvention of southern rock, MMJ find the pocket every time, and expand it to fit their vision. “Easy Morning Rebel” flat-out rocks like the Allmans, a boogie-heavy groove the perfect foothold for pedal steel and Jim’s potent wail, the addition of a stable of Stax session players unleashing horn swells rocking the joint to the hilt. Each composition seems to start out tightly-coiled before finally reaching the breaking point and shooting off into new, thrilling, freeing territory. “Golden” functions as a lovely folk number before a skiffle beat and CSNY harmonies push it into space; the aforementioned “One Big Holiday” is a riveting exercise in tension and release, building to crescendo and crashing into unfurling guitar solos with glib abandon.

It’s all very musical and very hypnotic, and I’m listening to it right now and I’m perfectly sober, so any accusations that My Morning Jacket exists solely for high people to bob their heads to is perfectly unfounded. It Still Moves is a wonderful, sprawling exploration of the MMJ sound, and what exactly makes that such an enthralling thing.

Playlist Track: “One Big Holiday”; who am I to argue with the obvious?
Next up:

191. Flight of the Conchords, Flight of the Conchords (2008)

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Another last-minute inclusion, Flight of the Conchords’ first proper record — doubling, essentially, as the soundtrack to the first season of their eponymous HBO show — almost didn’t make it, on the grounds that I wasn’t sure whether any comedy-based music that I enjoyed in the 2000s was on my radar because of the music vibes, or because of the chuckles.

Ultimately, the Kiwi duo’s full-length snuck onto the list on the strength of the songs, which are irreverent and goofy, yes, but also provide enough moments of musical stimuli to give this fun little platter tons of replay value. Like contemporaries Tenacious D and The Lonely Island, Bret and Jemaine make music that exists on its own as real, reasonably sincere music, while also functioning comedically.

Like, okay: take “Leggy Blonde”. “Conchords” co-star Rhys Darby takes point on this number, and it sounds like a bittersweet unrequited love song, and a pretty good one at that, with the Conchords proper swinging by to layer a harmonized descant in the choruses. If you’ve not seen the show, there’s no way for you to know that Darby’s clueless character Murray has slipped into song bidding adieu to a woman he only admires for her legs and hair; the joke may be lost on you, but when Jemaine butts in for four bars of an ill-timed, half-improvised faux-Sean Paul verse at the end, it hilariously deflates the song’s innate sincerity. Even without context, I’m saying, the Conchords are a fun pop band.

Without context, “Business Time” is still a very funny song, a bassy narrator’s romanticized account of routine marital obligation sex re-cast as a slinky slow jam, complete with scratched funk guitar and falsetto background vocals. Without context, “The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)” is a fantastic exercise in damning with faint praise, once again comically exaggerating the routine: the phrase “you’re so beautiful, you could be a part-time model… but you’re probably gonna have to keep your normal job too” says everything necessary about this Prince takeoff’s designs on romanticizing the mundane. And without context, the gloriously awkward “Hiphopapotamus vs. Rhymenocerous” is still a screamingly funny take on suburban appropriation of hip-hop, pitting two fake rappers against one another over a plucked acoustic guitar beat. I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed as hard at a song as the moment when Jemaine swoops in for a verse and proclaims, “I’m the Hiphopapotamus, my lyrics are bottomless” before clearing his throat and running out of rhymes for the next three bars.

And every track is a glorious pisstake. The Conchords tackle ’60s French pop (“Foux da Fafa”), glam rock (“Bowie”), grimy dancehall (the ridiculously addictive “Boom”), the Pet Shop Boys (“Inner City Pressure”), and Marvin Gaye message r&b (“Think About It”) with equal aplomb. Each new track is a delight; the chuckles make it worth listening to without interruption, but when the jokes wear off, the Conchords have plenty of personality and musical verve to spare.

Playlist track: “Robots”, possibly the funniest song here, and played entirely straight.
Next up: 

192. Mew, No More Stories… (2009)

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No More Stories / Are Told Today / I’m Sorry / They Washed Away // No More Stories / The World Is Grey / I’m Tired / Let’s Wash Away.

That’s the full, Fiona Apple-esque title of Mew’s 2009 record (heretofore shortened to No More Stories), and the music contained therein absolutely reflects the work of a band that would name their album an entire poem. That’s not to suggest that it’s willfully difficult or obtuse — on the contrary, it’s consistently beautiful, and often extraordinarily catchy — but it is kinda weird, and it’s important to know that going in.

Fun fact: I’ve still never heard another Mew album. I don’t know why. I remember when their record And the Glass Handed Kites was all over Newbury Comics endcaps in 2005, and making loads of mental notes to investigate it because the cover art intrigued me, but ultimately never doing the legwork to figure out if it was something I’d be into. I guess that makes me a reasonably unique audience for No More Stories, a record that in my world exists without much context.

No More Stories is a rare beast, an album that doesn’t fit handily within my “two kinds of albums” method of record reviewing; there are mood records, and then there are moment records, and they often brush against one another in the overlapping space of a Venn diagram, but this record defies easy categorization as either one. It defies easy characterization as anything, really — it’s kind of dream pop, and kind of indie, and kind of Band of Horses-esque with all those crisp, reedy tenor vocals and delicate melodies and the general feel of lying on your back and stargazing. And yet, it boasts a high level of musical sophistication, melodies and backing vocals cresting over one another, a covert record of perfect pop masquerading as pretentious indie.

It’s lovely, is what I’m saying. “Cartoons and Macrame Wounds” is the soundtrack to a beautiful space dream, a Polyphonic Spree-esque choir jacked up on helium floats, ghostly and gorgeous, through the background of “Silas the Magic Car”, “Hawaii” twinkles and gallops like My Morning Jacket playing a kids’ summer camp. And then there’s “Beach”, one of the most aptly-titled songs of the entire decade, a lazy romp in the sand at twilight set to a breathtaking pop shimmer.

I may not have ever heard another Mew album; I suspect I will one day, although who knows, there’s lots of music out there. But No More Stories is lightning in a bottle — a strikingly beautiful cruise through a dreamy landscape with more moving pieces than you realize.

Playlist Track: It’s gotta be “Beach”, the song that fares best when removed from the record, and a perfect example of musical mood-setting all to itself.
Next up:

193. Basement Jaxx, Kish Kash (2003)

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A breathlessly funky, endlessly-replayable, giddy romp through some futuristic discotheque, Basement Jaxx’s Kish Kash remains a shining example of what the dance musics are capable of: one, duh, it’s an intensely danceable record, and two, each second of this record is jammed with some sort of ridiculously sugary — yet delicious — ear candy.

Kish Kash is an album of moments. Consistency is attained, but not a factor in its ultimate success — no, what counts here is how around every corner lurks a brand new melody, a new hook from a new guest vocalist, a new sound that wasn’t there before. I’ll be honest with you all: I’m kind of phoning this one in. I’m listening to Kish Kash right now, and I feel like I’ve mainlined pure sugar into my brain. I’m drowning in sounds. There is a wet t-shirt contest in my head and I’m every contestant. I want to rip these headphones from my ears and shake my lurching, gelatinous frame across this tiny room.

The glorious purple ghost of Prince past haunts every corner of this record, from JC Chasez’s shrill falsetto yawps on the pulsating, delirious “Plug It In” to the squelching, soulful guitar solo that bursts through the chest of “Supersonic”. Me’shell Ndegeocello’s pumping, carnal “Right There’s the Spot” calls to mind Dirty Mind, while her closer “Feels Like Home” slow-burns like the specter of “Adore”. Acoustic guitar passages link up with other elements like a funky Megazord — the roiling, salsa-flecked classical guitars on “Tonight” demand a cool strut, while rhythmically-scrubbed acoustics underscore Dizzee Rascal’s euphoric “Lucky Star” cadence.

It’s all of this and more, Kish Kash is, a wonderfully, addictive, funky, smart, soulful record that outpaces any of the electronica OR the radio pop of its day handily. It’s all this, and I haven’t even addressed album opener “Good Luck”, the logical spiritual successor to “I Will Survive”, a groovy kiss-off bolstered by a snarling, ferocious, tour de force vocal courtesy of Lisa Kekaula. It’s an early high point for an album packed to the rafters with highs.

Playlist Track: “Good Luck”. Easily.

194. The Hold Steady, Separation Sunday (2005)

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Who do we credit for creating The Hold Steady? Do we point, as many reviewers have, towards Bruce Springsteen, who juiced exciting, organ-spackled rock instrumentals with a series of small-town rock operas? Do we cite The Replacements, who married youthful ennui to frenetic bar rock? Can we even point to the Rolling Stones, who draped off-tune but charismatic vocals over precise, workmanlike, but non-flashy blues-rock?

It’s hard to say, because The Hold Steady are as much a product of rock’s past as they are an entity all their own. That said, if you’ve inhaled any of the critical gas about THS before actually listening to them, you’re in for a very interesting awakening: frontman Craig Finn’s rambling, stream-of-consciousness lyrics tumble from him like spittle from a drunken, slightly insane barroom narrator. It’s kind of singing, but it’s kind of not; he often threatens to build to a big hook without actually following through, just pushing the story forward without any respite from a catchy intermission. He’s singing over the kind of big, chunky bar-rock you expect to build to a real corker of a melody — think The Black Crowes — and the band zigs when you expect them to zag. The Hold Steady, and Finn specifically, are the very definition of an acquired taste.

Future albums would sand down Finn’s more ramble-y, atonal sensibilities; his voice still as distinct as ever, later records Boys and Girls in America and Stay Positive featured choruses and bridges and sunny harmonies. Are they better records than Separation Sunday? Hard to say — you’ll have to stay tuned to find out what I think. What I’ll tell you, though, is that after sticking with The Hold Steady ever since 2005 — when buzzwords like “literary” and “Springsteen-esque” compelled me to pick this record up — Separation Sunday holds a unique, special place in the band’s discography.

It’s the logical midpoint between 2004’s messy, devil-may-care Almost Killed Me and 2006’s shiny, big-rock Boys and Girls. On Separation Sunday, Finn drags his established cast of characters — messy, conflicted street youths Gideon, Holly, and Charlemagne — into a broad, universal story of love and redemption. That’s where the Springsteen really comes in — Finn cares for and nurtures his characters, maintaining lyrical and thematic consistency throughout, watching them navigate dusty Middle America and make poor decisions.

It’s a fun album to sit down and unravel, but the music vibes are what really make it pop. Reviews — this one included — like to carry on about THS’s classic-rock sensibility, but simply likening them to “classic rock” short-changes how exciting the music is. Witness the winding, apocalyptic “Cattle and the Creeping Things”, a firestorm of Biblical imagery culminating in ominous horn lines and epic swaths of Roy Bittan-esque piano theatrics — it’s an absolute corker, cinematic and muscly and seething. “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” rides in on muted guitars before blossoming into one of the album’s only full-fledged singalongs (and seriously, it’s fun to sing along — just speak the title out loud, it’s a blast). “Stevie Nix” morphs from bar rock to gripping piano coda like a miniature “Jungleland”; “Don’t Let Me Explode” walks a wobbly tightrope wire between bruising blues-rock and delicate doo-wop.

Separation Sunday takes time for a lot of people — myself included. But it’s worth it — it’s big, emotional, smart, and it rocks like nothing has rocked since the ’70s. Finn would go on to trot out Gideon, Holly, and Charlemagne on later records, but we never got to know them half as well as we did here.

Playlist track: I’m tempted to call out “Cattle and the Creeping Things”, but ultimately, “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” sounds the best out of context.
Next up:

195. The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan (2005)

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Love or hate him, Jack White might be the preeminent rock musician of the 2000s. Over the course of the decade, the man pumped out four albums as one half of the White Stripes, two Raconteurs records, at least one Dead Weather record, a producer’s credit on a critically acclaimed Loretta Lynn album, and probably the high-pitched vocals on Electric Six’s “Danger! High Voltage”, although I think he’s still not owning up to that last one. His warped, skeletal guitar sensibility, those highly distinctive vocals, the weird anachronistic blues fetishism… Jack White isn’t only synonymous with the rock of his decade, he’s the decade’s earliest indie crossover star.

Often derided as the Stripes’ weakest record, Get Behind Me Satan was the victim (benefactor?) of a series of very unusual sonic choices on White’s part; after four records of the same formula (quick, bluesy, drums & guitar), Jack and Meg went sideways on Satan, stirring some new ingredients into the stew. The weird, eerie “The Nurse” is marimba-led, as is the strangely catchy, slow-burning “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)”; “My Doorbell” and “The Denial Twist” are identical soul-flecked piano stompers; White tries piano-led torch songs with “White Moon” and “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” and even a hoedown with the addictive, silly “Little Ghost”. It’s easily the most varied, experimental record of the Stripes’ discography, and that’s precisely what makes it so compelling.

It’s not that it ever feels like Jack and Meg are betraying their core sensibility. Jack still writes so-simple-they’re-brilliant ditties based on classic American styles, rooted in an undeniably retro sensibility, led by Meg’s now-patented no-frills drum stomp. Even though they only sound like the White Stripes of, say, White Blood Cells once or twice here — particularly on the grinding, raw rawk of “Instinct Blues” and the apocalyptic Led Zep-worshipping “Red Rain” — Satan still thrives with the raw, spontaneous urgency of their best work. Much of it, in fact, numbers among their best work: there’s no way the propulsive, angular opener “Blue Orchid” isn’t the most thrilling two and a half minutes in their entire catalogue, and “My Doorbell” is easily their most perfect pop number.

It’s late in the game by the time White tips his hand; as White nimbly navigates a busy acoustic guitar line for “As Ugly As I Seem”, it becomes abundantly clear that he could have been an alt-folkie a la Sam Beam or a freak-folk maven like Devendra Banhart as easily as he became blues-rock’s professor emeritus. The message is simple: Get Behind Me Satan may deviate from the formula, but the formula becomes unnecessary when you’re as adept at simply writing good songs as White is. That’s why Get Behind Me Satan is ultimately a success — it takes a sharp left into uncharted territory and emerges unscathed.

Playlist Track: Let’s go with “My Doorbell”, a groovy, catchy enough track to score head-nods in most scenarios.
Next up: Barroom rock, dense mythology, and Catholic imagery: together at last!