The Absolute Sound Super Disc List    TAS Harry Pearson Super LP List

TAS Super LP List! Special Merit: Informal

180 Gram Double Vinyl! 2004 Grammy Award-Winner - Best Alternative Music Album! 
Includes "Seven Nation Army"!  Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 390/500!

The White Stripes, songwriter Jack White (vocals, guitar, piano, and once bass) and Meg White (drums and occasional vocals) formed in 1997 in Detroit, Michigan. After releasing several singles and three albums within the Detroit independent music underground, The White Stripes rose to prominence in 2002, as part of the garage rock revival scene. 

Their use of analog and low-fidelity equipment in the recording process partnered with a do-it-yourself approach created a raw simplicity of composition, arrangement, and performance that sets them apart from their contemporaries. 

Recorded in a brief two-week stint at Liam Watson’s Toe Rag studio in London, with no equipment dating past the epochal year of 1963, the band’s fourth album is dedicated to “The Death of the Sweetheart.” Elephant stretches seamlessly from extreme polar opposites of the musical spectrum in mere minutes. Songs like “Seven Nation Army” and the “The Hardest Button to Button” are sinister and powerful, with tones and harmonics so eerie that they might have been written at the Winchester Mystery House. At the same time, songs like “There’s No Home for You Here” and “You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket” enjoy such innocent, pop naiveté that one can’t help but wonder if Jack White thinks/dreams in such scattered song styles or if he’s laughing at you trying to dissect his every last word. The sincere emotion that is the foundation of the ‘feeling’ you get listening to the White Stripes’ music ties every song together.

This record will be remembered. Everything is laid out for the critics to pick and pull apart. Don’t think too deep. Just listen. Turn off the outside world. Elephant opens doors to a thousand different stories. This is not hype. This is an understatement. Like an elephant never forgets, you will remember “Elephant” forever...

Musicians:

Jack White, vocals, guitar, piano
Meg White, drums, vocals 

Selections:
- Side A:
1. Seven Nation Army
2. Black Math
3. There's No Home For You Here
- Side B:
1. I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
2. In The Cold, Cold Night
3. I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother's Heart
4. You've Got Her In Your Pocket

 - Side C:
1. Ball And Biscuit
2. The Hardest Button To Button
3. Little Acorns
 - Side D:
1. Hypnotize
2. The Air Near My Fingers
3. Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine
4. It's True That We Love One Another