The White Stripes - Icky Thump

In doing a bit of research (how professional do I sound?) for this single, I found it impossible to maintain a shred of attention or concentration because of the cock in mouth cacophony of the reviewers. Jack White is “this”, Jack White is “that”, “best guitarist around”, “best voice around”, “best songwriter around”, “best frontman around”, etc. etc. etc.

Is he? Really?!?

If the aliens came down in a big saucer and told the human race that they wanted the best there was or else they’d blast us into smithereens with ray-guns, would we really offer up Jack White? In all fairness it’d probably depend upon who the extra terrestrials approached. I’m thinking it’d be George Bush or the Pope, but you never know with these dodgy peripheral pilgrims. Got to be one of those though hasn’t it?

If aliens were coming, they’d have done their research and they’d go straight to the most powerful man (when I say man, I’m not being sexist, I’m saying man as a generic term for mankind, this encompasses both men and women). I can’t see Bush or the Pope pointing towards Jack White, probably more because of their personal taste in all honesty, but that’s beside the point.

Saying that, if they did come to speak to the world’s most powerful people, we could royally fuck them over by giving them Erasure’s Andy Bell, and then they wouldn’t have a chance of putting their weird pointy three fingered palms on our planet, horrible googly eyed big headed nomad fucks. Aye, that’s right you alien bastards, go and probe the Bell, suck his brains out for all we care, let’s see you invade our planet when you’ve all got the AIDS.

Let’s get the lazy stuff out of the way, so you don’t have to read every other review in the world. It sounds like Led Zeppelin, it contains electric bagpipes/synths/electric violins (depending where you read), it doesn’t contain piano, it’s very political, it’s classic 70’s heavy rock.

In all honesty, it’s more Spinal Tap than Sabbath, and it’s more heavy going than Heavy Metal.

It reminds me of High Tide, which is by no means bad, but that’s the thing, it’s not actually any good. It’s poor, but isn’t that the trend nowadays? Bands go on sabbatical, come back with a new album with a shite lead single, but after constant radio play, you start to like it. This won’t happen though, not for me anyhow, I’ve heard it far too many times, and I’m not for the turning.

The chances of me ever liking this single are the same as the chances of anything coming from Mars, a million to one, they say.

“Icky Thump” comes from the Yorkshire slang, “Ecky Thump”, meaning an exclamation of shock or surprise, here’s another Yorkshire phrase, “fucking shite”.


Here is the video for the single, so you can have a watch and a listen...