The White Stripes
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
While they may have sprung from the Detroit rock scene (and they remain regular fixtures on the Detroit club circuit, with Jack producing or working with many Detroit-area bands), the White Stripes quickly gained a national following after two successive tours with indie rockers Pavement and Sleater-Kinney in 1999 and 2000. The White Stripes released their second LP, De Stijl, in 2000 and it further spread the groups reputation. They followed its release with successful tours of Japan and Australia and entered the Memphis studio of renowned producer Doug Easley for 2001s White Blood Cells. The album was a critical smash and the White Stripes soon found themselves, along with the Strokes and the Hives, at the forefront of the new wave of rock & roll bands poised to take over the world. The band certainly did their best to achieve world domination, appearing on Late Night with David Lettterman, being written about in Time, The New Yorker, and Entertainment Weekly, playing the MTV Movie Awards, and having their video for Fell in Love with a Girl in heavy rotation on MTV. They also made the tough decision to jump to a major label; White Blood Cells was reissued on V2 in January of 2002 and their first two records followed suit in June. The White Stripes truly became big time rock stars when their Fell in Love with a Girl clip was nominated for four MTV Video Awards, including Best Video of the Year (alongside Eminem and *NSYNC!), Breakthrough Video, Best Special Effects in a Video, and Best Editing in a Video. That summer the group also played four triumphant shows with the Strokes, two apiece in the bands respective hometowns. In spring 2003 their fourth full-length, Elephant -- recorded in two weeks at Londons Toerag Studio and dedicated to the death of the sweetheart -- arrived to nearly unanimous critical acclaim. In 2005 the Stripes returned with Get Behind Me Satan, a dizzyingly diverse album that spanned disco-metal and light, marimba-driven pop and was written and recorded in two weeks that spring. While touring that year, the band covered Tegan and Saras Walking with a Ghost, which they released as a single at the end of 2005.
