The White Stripes
Elephant
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The White Stripes' Jack and Meg White must be breathing easier. With the release of their eagerly awaited CD ``Elephant'', they get a pachyderm's worth of weight off their backs.

In stores Tuesday, ``Elephant'' arrives perfectly positioned to be a disappointment, proof that the White Stripes are an over-hyped music industry phenomenon.

It isn't, and they aren't.

Just when you're thinking the Motor City minimalists can't possibly live up to expectations, they deliver an album that shows them moving ahead without sacrificing any of the raw and rootsy charm that made them a breakout act.

Since the appearance of their debut album in 1999, it's been easy to believe the White Stripes are a triumph of self-consciously primitive style over substance. The black, red and white album covers match the band members' black hair and red and white candy-striped clothes. Jack, 27, continues to cloak the band in an aura of mystery and incestuous confusion by claiming he and Meg, 28, are brother and sister, when in fact she's his ex-wife.

When they titled their second album ``De Stijl,'' after a Dutch artistic movement advocating simplicity, it seemed a winking admission that all of Jack's earnest yammering about musical purity, as well as Meg's cave-girl drum bashing, were just an artsy, indie-rock prank.

But one couldn't easily dismiss the White Stripes' music. As a singer, songwriter and guitarist, Jack demonstrated an arresting ability to make ear-catching songs out of his punk/blues mix. The White Stripes found just how appealing their songs - and shtick - could be after the 2001 release of ``White Blood Cells.'' The duo became MTV favorites in 2002, riding the single ``Fell In Love With a Girl,'' and won three MTV Video Music Awards. The album reached No. 1 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart and has sold nearly 650,000 copies. That's a lot for an indie release. The White Stripes even entered the big-time rock world last year when they opened several concerts for the Rolling Stones.

All of which sets the stage for the Stripes' headlining tour, which stops April 20 at the Orpheum, and the release of ``Elephant.''

The first notes of the first ``Elephant'' track, ``Seven Nation Army,'' will tell fans that the two-piece band has altered its rule book. They are bass notes, the sound famously missing from most of the group's previous work. The bass riff - actually Jack playing his guitar through a pitch-dropping device - accompanies his vocal about wanting to get away from it all by moving to Wichita, Kansas.

But ``Elephant'' isn't one of those noxious complaining-about-fame discs. Most of the songs concern getting - or not getting - along with the opposite sex. The sporadic use of a chorus of voices in ``There's No Home For You Here'' already has earned comparisons to Queen, but this ambitious number is a brush-off/put-down song in the Dylan mold. ``I'm only waiting for the proper time to tell you that it's impossible to get along with you,'' Jack sings.

The White Stripes have covered Dylan and Robert Johnson in the past, but this time they tackle much different old masters: the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Jack covers their ``I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself,'' a Dionne Warwick oldie that he turns into a tumultuous emotional eruption - and it owes nothing to the version by Elvis Costello.

Meg makes her debut as lead singer on ``In the Cold, Cold Night,'' a spooky number that has some of the flavor of ``Fever.'' She's no Peggy Lee, but her girlish voice sounds just right cooing ``You make me feel a little older, like a full-grown woman might.''

Adolescent yearning is a theme that runs through the lyrics (along with Jack's frequent mentions of his mother, one hang-up he seems to have in common with his Detroit homey Eminem). ``I'm inclined to finish high school just to make you notice that I'm around,'' he sings to the object of his affections on ``I Want to Be the Boy,'' the first of two winningly winsome, back-to-back ballads.

But don't think the White Stripes have gone soft. A bracing punk attack characterizes ``Black Math,'' the investigative pharmacology of ``Girl You Have No Faith in Medicine'' and ``Hypnotize,'' the obvious sonic child of ``Fell In Love With a Girl.''

The album's centerpiece is the seven-minute heavy blues ``Ball and Biscuit,'' which finds Jack at his Robert Plant-iest and Jimmy Page-iest. When he's not singing about being ``a seventh son,'' he's unleashing paint-peeling blasts of cliche-free guitar licks.

``Elephant'' ends with a reminder that music, as well as all the speculation about Jack and Meg's relationship, is supposed to be fun. Jack and Meg engage in a musical menage a trois with English folk/punk singer Holly Golightly, who teasingly sings, ``I love Jack White like a little brother.'' When she asks Meg, ``Do you think that Jack really loves me?'' Meg replies, ``Y'know I don't care, 'cause Jack really bores me.''

Funny. But what's important is that Jack won't bore you. Staying true to his own vision, he's made ``Elephant'' the king of the garage rock jungle.

©2003 Boston Herald. All rights reserved.