The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The White Stripes · produced by Jack White · Sympathy for the Record Industry · sixteen tracks, about 40 minutes
Mode
Garage rock and blues by two players; country blues, Detroit garage and 1990s punk-blues, with a country stomp, acoustic songs and a parlour piano close
Mythos
The lost Eden of childhood against the fallen adult world of fame, money and the crowd; the boy who stays the same, the schoolchild and the friend, the house left and the hearth kept
Phase
Sixteen tracks; a house left in the first, a run of riffs and a country stomp, a parable of under a minute at the sixth as the hinge, a looser middle and late stretch, and a voice at the piano to close
Presentation
Album; sixteen tracks, about forty minutes, most under three; the duo presented as a brother and sister, in red, white and black
Register
Guitar, electric and acoustic, drums, piano and voice, with no bass; a voice from music-hall lilt and croon to scream, often within a line
Scale
The self under first attention, childhood and the school, the household and marriage, desire, with class, money and power glimpsed
Governing Proposition
Two players, a guitar, a drum kit and a piano, with no bass, make sixteen short songs that leave a house in the first track and keep one in the last. Under the first pressure of attention a grown man reaches back for the forms of childhood, the schoolyard friend, the first crush, the small room and the home, and the record wagers that those forms, played in the fewest means, are the only ones in which love can still be spoken plainly.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens by leaving a house. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground sets the riff struck hard, the drums on the beat and almost nothing else, and the voice pushed to its edge over it; what it sings of is a home left behind, its leaves still on the ground. The first track gives the record’s terms in sound before it gives them in words: two players, no bass, a riff of great economy and a feeling given at once. Everything that follows is made from the same few means, and the record will end, sixteen tracks later, at a piano by a hearth.
White Blood Cells is the third album of The White Stripes, Jack White on guitar, piano and voice and Meg White on drums. Sympathy for the Record Industry of Long Beach issued it on 3 July 2001, produced by Jack White: sixteen tracks in one sequence, about forty minutes, most of them under three. Later editions, remasters and the anniversary issues of 2021 are context, not the object. The duo was presented as a brother and sister, in red, white and black; that presentation surrounds the record and is not credited to it.
The inheritance is plain to hear: the country blues of Son House and Robert Johnson, the garage rock of the Stooges and Detroit, the punk-blues of the 1990s, and the duo’s own first two albums. The turn is by subtraction. No bass, and a drummer who plays almost nothing but the beat, for an independent band about to be heard widely, when a sound this bare could be taken as a joke or a gimmick. The wager was real. But the format and the colours were already in place on the earlier records, and the Gories, the Oblivians and Jon Spencer had made bare blues-rock before. The departure is more from the rock of its day than from its own tradition.
Movement II
The fourth track is under two minutes of pure velocity, the record’s sharpest transport and the song that carried it furthest. A riff, a shout and the drums driving straight through, and then it is over. It belongs to the record’s first run, where elevation comes often and mostly in one kind: Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground opens on the lift of a riff; Hotel Yorba, the wish for a small room and a plain marriage, comes in a country stomp and a music-hall lilt; I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman rises by slowing, the voice cracking over a lurching groove.
The making is the guitar’s and the voice’s. Jack White’s riffs are economical, his tone raw but controlled, and the voice commands several registers, from the lilt of Hotel Yorba to the scream it will reach later in I Can’t Wait. The songs are tight and their melodies well made. Meg White’s drumming is rudimentary by intent and right for the record, the command of a single gesture rather than of a range. The recording is quick and honest, and the room is heard; the mixes are often rough and the low end is thin, and that roughness is part of what the record is and part of what holds its making below the best of its kind.
The field was the rock record of 2001, a year when guitar rock was widely thought spent. The record did not reorganise possibility so much as show that an old one, blues-rock played raw by two people, could still be heard as new and carry feeling without irony. With The Strokes’ Is This It of the same year it is commonly credited with returning stripped guitar rock to the mainstream in Britain and America, and the two-piece band without bass became a common format after it, though the Black Keys were forming in the same years and the descent is shared. Much of the band’s own reach came with its next record, Elephant.
Movement III
The sixth track lasts under a minute, and it is the hinge of the sequence. Little Room is a parable of success, a room outgrown, told in a few lines and gone. It is needed precisely because it is small. Placed sixth of sixteen, after the record has shown what its riffs can do and before it turns toward its plainer songs, it states in miniature what the record is about: a man under the first pressure of attention, looking back at the room he has left.
The pattern it states runs under the whole record: the lost Eden of childhood, held against the fallen adult world of fame, money and the crowd. Its figures are archetypes kept particular, the boy who stays the same, the schoolchild walking with a friend in autumn, the lovers who want a hotel room and a ring, the house of the first track with its dead leaves. The persona of a brother and sister, playing children in red and white, carries the pattern into the band’s own presentation. Much of it is summoned in image and mood rather than built, and several tracks leave it entirely.
The Union Forever, the seventh track, is the strongest construction. Its words are by report taken from Citizen Kane, a film whose own myth is lost childhood, and on that report the borrowing makes the record’s longing explicit as a fall from Rosebud into power. It is the one place where money and power enter the record, and it enters them through an older form, a borrowed film, held up against the present. The pattern is clearest here and in Little Room beside it; the songs do not build it in sequence, and that is what holds the record’s myth below the gate.
Movement IV
The ninth track is the plainest on the record and its central disclosure. A finger-picked acoustic guitar and a near-whispered voice tell of a child’s friendship, walking to school in autumn, in a child’s diction and without irony. Played by a full band with a polished production, it would be sentimental; here the exposure of two players is what makes it sincere. Change the form and the knowledge goes. The song’s hush is a second kind of height on a record whose heights are mostly loud, and it has deepened with the years rather than worn.
What the record discloses can be stated. A grown man under the first pressure of attention reaches back for the forms of childhood, the schoolyard friend, the first crush, the small room and the home, and finds that those forms are the only ones in which love can still be spoken plainly. The Same Boy You’ve Always Known, the eighth track, gives its cost: a man asking to be recognised as unchanged, rising to a wounded height when the song opens out. The sound says the same thing as the words: a recording stripped to two players claims that directness is still possible.
The disclosure is held below the summit bar for reasons the record itself gives. Its condition is more mood and stance than articulated meaning; several songs are love complaints of a familiar kind; and the persona, a pair presented as siblings who were in fact a divorced couple, blurs what is being said and about whom. That question has been argued over for twenty-five years and repays thought. Beyond the ninth track the subtractive test begins to bite: Expecting, I Think I Smell a Rat and Now Mary each restate a manner already shown, and Aluminum, mostly wordless roar, is atmosphere more than argument.
Movement V
Before the close comes the record’s most ferocious release. I Can’t Wait climbs to a scream, the voice at the furthest edge of its range, and I Can Learn follows it. Then This Protector ends the record at the piano: a voice and a parlour instrument at the hearth, the only quiet ending that fits. The record that opened by leaving a house closes by keeping one. The frame is the sequence’s argument, and between its ends the middle and late tracks are ordered by contrast more than by necessity, a few of them containers of the manner rather than instruments of it.
One law binds the whole: plainness against complication, the child’s honesty against the adult’s performance, in the fewest means. The two most distant elements, Fell in Love with a Girl at full volume and We’re Going to Be Friends at almost none, obey it; so do Hotel Yorba’s stomp, The Union Forever’s borrowed film words and this closing piano, each an older or simpler form held up against the present. But the range is the range of one band’s moods, and what the record holds lies close together: the self under attention, childhood and the school, the household and marriage, desire, with class glimpsed and the state, labour, history and the sacred absent.
Twenty-five years on, the recording survives as released, in print and streamed; three of its songs remain in broadcast, film and common use, and it has dated less than most of its decade’s production, made to sound older than its year. Its presence comes more through those songs than through the record played whole. It stands in Tier III, and what holds it there is stated on its axes: a disclosure more of mood than of meaning, a myth evoked more than built, a turn on a path already cleared, reach that its successor widened, a yield on return that is warmth more than study, and a world held small by choice. It is a record that knows what it is, and its smallness is both its claim and its limit.
Act III · The Twelve
Sixteen tracks in about forty minutes, most under three, and the subtractive test finds a record built against excess: no song is extended past its idea. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground must open, the house left behind and the riff that sets the record’s terms. Hotel Yorba, the wish for a small room and a plain marriage, is required, and so are Fell in Love with a Girl, We’re Going to Be Friends and The Same Boy You’ve Always Known, each saying what the others do not. Little Room is needed because it is small, and This Protector is the only quiet ending that fits. The test bites in the middle and late: Expecting, I Think I Smell a Rat and Now Mary restate a manner already shown, and Aluminum is atmosphere more than argument.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: a grown man under the first pressure of attention reaches back for the forms of childhood, the schoolyard friend, the first crush, the small room and the home, and finds that those forms are the only ones in which love can still be spoken plainly. We’re Going to Be Friends states it most fully, a child’s friendship told in a child’s diction without irony, and The Same Boy You’ve Always Known gives its cost, a man asking to be recognised as unchanged. Little Room points the same truth at success. The sound discloses too: two players claim that directness is still possible. Held below: the condition is more mood and stance than articulated meaning, several songs are love complaints of a familiar kind, and the pair presented as siblings blurs what is said about whom.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation is frequent and mostly of one kind, the physical lift of a riff struck hard and a voice pushed to its edge. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground opens on it; Fell in Love with a Girl is under two minutes of pure velocity, the record’s sharpest transport; I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman rises by slowing, the voice cracking over a lurching groove. I Can’t Wait climbs to the record’s most ferocious release, and The Same Boy You’ve Always Known reaches a wounded height when the song opens out. A gentler kind comes in the hush of We’re Going to Be Friends. What holds the figure: the heights are of exhilaration and ache rather than grandeur or terror, brief by design, and the stretch from Expecting to Now Mary stays level more often than it rises. Under Remain in Light at 8.6, close to Zooropa at 8.0.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Myth is evoked often and built in one pattern: the lost Eden of childhood, held against the fallen adult world of fame, money and the crowd. The figures are archetypes kept particular: the boy who stays the same, the schoolchild walking with a friend in autumn, the lovers who want a hotel room and a ring, the house of the first track left with its dead leaves. The Union Forever is the strongest construction: its words are by report taken from Citizen Kane, a film whose own myth is lost childhood, and on that report the borrowing makes the longing explicit as a fall from Rosebud into power. The persona of a brother and sister carries the myth into the band’s presentation. What holds it: the pattern is mostly summoned in image and mood, the songs do not build it in sequence, and several tracks leave it entirely.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The inheritance is the Delta and Detroit both: the country blues of Son House and Robert Johnson, the garage rock of the Stooges, the punk-blues of the 1990s, and the duo’s own first two albums. The turn is by subtraction: no bass, and a drummer who plays almost nothing but the beat. The wager was real for an independent band about to be heard widely: a sound this bare could be taken as a joke or a gimmick, and the sibling story and the colour scheme risked it further. What holds the figure: the duo format and the red, white and black frame were already in place on the earlier records, the bare blues-rock record had precedents in the Gories, the Oblivians and Jon Spencer, and the departure is more from the rock of its day than from its own tradition. Under Remain in Light at 8.6.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Change the form and much of the knowledge goes. A record whose claim is that the simple forms are the true ones is made quickly by two people, with no bass and short songs, and the making enacts the claim: the austerity is the argument, not its wrapping. Played by a full band with a polished production, We’re Going to Be Friends would be sentimental and Fell in Love with a Girl ordinary; here the exposure of two players is what makes them sincere. The sequence is counted here, once: it opens with a house left and closes, in This Protector, with a piano and a voice at the hearth, moving from leaving home to keeping one, with Little Room as the hinge at track six. What holds the figure: the middle and late sequence is ordered by contrast more than by necessity, and a few tracks are containers of the manner rather than instruments of it.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Twenty-five years supply evidence, real but bounded. The record is still returned to, and its standing has held rather than faded; the persona questions it raised, the siblings who were in fact a divorced couple and the childhood pose of a grown man, have been argued over and repay thought. On return the recording yields in its feel: the push and drag between guitar and drums, the sound of the room, the voice moving from croon to scream within a line. Semantically the yield is narrower. We’re Going to Be Friends and The Same Boy You’ve Always Known deepen with time; Little Room reads differently once the band’s later fame is known. But many songs are complete on first hearing, and the attention the record receives is warmth more than study. A tenth above m b v at 7.3; under Zooropa at 7.7.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The field is the rock record of 2001, a year when guitar rock was widely thought spent. The intrinsic force is bounded: the record did not reorganise possibility so much as show that an old possibility, blues-rock played raw by two people, could still be heard as new and could carry feeling without irony. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: with The Strokes’ Is This It of the same year it is commonly credited with returning stripped guitar rock to the mainstream in Britain and America, and the two-piece rock band without bass became a common format in the decades after, though the Black Keys were forming in the same years and the line of descent is shared. Much of the band’s own reach came with its next record, Elephant, at 8.5 on this axis. Above Zooropa at 7.4; under Remain in Light at 8.5.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Survival is weighed over twenty-five years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as released and is in print and streamed. Presence is continuous and wide: Fell in Love with a Girl, Hotel Yorba and We’re Going to Be Friends remain in broadcast, film and common use, and the record is placed high whenever its decade is counted. The fabric is little fixed to 2001: the record was made to sound older than its year, analogue and bare, and has dated less than most of its decade’s production. The charge is that much of its presence comes through three songs rather than the record played whole, and that keeps it a tenth under the widest figure its span allows, and below records of forty years and more such as Remain in Light at 8.7.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, read to the same anchors as the elder desks, with invention credited elsewhere. Jack White’s guitar is the record’s strength: riffs of great economy in Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground and Fell in Love with a Girl, a tone raw but controlled, and a voice that commands several registers, from the music-hall lilt of Hotel Yorba to the scream of I Can’t Wait. The songwriting is tight; the melodies of Hotel Yorba and We’re Going to Be Friends are well made. Meg White’s drumming is rudimentary by intent and right for the record, but it is the command of a single gesture, not of a range. The recording is quick and honest and the room is heard, yet the mixes are often rough, the low end is thin, and Now Mary and I Think I Smell a Rat are made with less care than the best. Under m b v at 8.5 and Zooropa at 8.2.
Score: 7.9 / 10
One law governs the record: plainness against complication, the child’s honesty against the adult’s performance, played in the fewest possible means. Take the two most distant elements: Fell in Love with a Girl, under two minutes of distortion and shouting, and We’re Going to Be Friends, a near-whispered acoustic song about school. They obey the same law; both are a feeling given at once, without ornament, one at full volume and one at none. Hotel Yorba’s country stomp, The Union Forever’s borrowed film words and This Protector’s parlour piano also fit, each an older or simpler form held up against the present. What holds the figure: the range is the range of one band’s moods, and narrowness is not coherence; Aluminum and I Think I Smell a Rat obey the sound but not the meaning, and the persona’s irony sits a little outside the record’s sincerity.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form and no credit for its absence. Consciousness is held as the self under first attention, in Little Room and The Same Boy You’ve Always Known. Childhood and the school are held fully in We’re Going to Be Friends; the household and marriage in Hotel Yorba and This Protector; desire throughout. Class and the family’s authority are glimpsed in I Think I Smell a Rat, and money and power enter through The Union Forever. The city is Detroit by implication. What holds the figure lowest: most orders arrive as single images within short songs, the state, labour, history and the sacred are absent or only glanced at, and the record’s chosen smallness, its virtue under The Living Form, limits what it can hold together. Level with m b v at 6.6.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Living Form, The Made and The Inner Law at 7.9. A recording whole after twenty-five years, in print and in common use through three songs, its analogue bareness dated less than its decade’s production; a form whose austerity is its argument, opening on a house left and closing at a hearth; riffs of great economy and a voice from lilt to scream; and one law of plainness binding a two-minute shout to a whispered school song.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: the self under attention, childhood, the household, marriage and desire, with class, money and power glimpsed and the state, labour, history and the sacred absent, most of it in single images within short songs. Then The Bottomless Well at 7.4: a feel that repays return and a few songs that deepen, but many complete on first hearing and attention more warm than studious. Then The Archetypal Deep at 7.5, where the lost Eden of childhood is evoked in image and mood and not built in sequence.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.9, The Made at 7.9, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.5 meets the bar of 8.5 exactly, but Pressure on Tradition at 7.8, The Swerve at 7.7, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.5 fall short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Bottomless Well, 7.4, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by Sympathy for the Record Industry, Long Beach, on 3 July 2001, sixteen tracks in their original order, about forty minutes, produced by Jack White, with Jack White on guitar, piano and voice and Meg White on drums; judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The album is the unit; later editions, remasters and the anniversary issues of 2021 are context only, and the band’s presentation, its colours and its account of itself, is not credited to the record. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. Running times are given only roughly. The source of the words of The Union Forever in Citizen Kane is stated as report. Facts that could not be verified, among them the record’s later issues in America and Britain and their labels, the studio, the engineer and the length of the sessions, the rules the band is said to have set itself for the record, Meg White’s share of the singing, the exact lengths of the tracks, the sleeve, the videos made for the songs and their makers, and the films in which the songs have been used, are not given.