Customer Reviews

De Stijl

5 star:		(91)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

First of all, I think the Stripes gave this album the perfect name. De Stijl is the perfect description for their "minimalistic" sound. Bands just don't make music like this anymore. It is difficult to find words to do justice to this album...it is that good. This album has a very heavy blues influence, executed to perfection. My ratings of each song are:

You're Pretty Good Looking - 9 (very poppy, easily accessible)
Hello Operator - 10 (the harmonica is the icing on the cake)
Little Bird - 10 (my favorite, it ROCKS!!!)
Apple Blossom - 9 (Could have been on several Beatles albums)
I'm bound to Pack it Up - 9
Death Letter - 10 (great song, kind of a "rockabilly" sound)
Sister do You Know My Name - 10
Truth Doesn't Make a Noise - 10
A Boy's Best Friend - 10 (I absolutely LOVE this song...very bluesy)
Let's Build a Home - 10
Jumble, Jumble - 6 (I think the weakest song)
Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me? - 10
You're Southern Can is Mine - 10 (super catchy)

I realize that the Stripes' popularity is primarily due to White Blood Cells and Elephant. Those albums are good, but they are not nearly as strong as De Stijl. If you are a White Stripes fan, this is a must buy. For those who believe the Stripes are hype, this CD could change your mind.

After buying White Blood Cells, I had decided to buy either this or The White Stripes. I chose this, because it was the only one of the two I could find. Oh my God how pleased am I that I did. This is the best album I've ever heard.
There's no word for this album really apart from Amazing. If you've got White Blood Cells, the third of the albums to come along you'll have some idea of what this band is like. Now take that idea, throw in a big bag of Detroit rock, blues guitar riffs, cheerful harmonica tunes and hillbilly vocals, and you have what can only be described as a joyous...well...mess, of music.
The first track, You're Pretty Good Looking, is fantastic, combining puppy love singing and simple crunchy guitar. Hello Operator introduces the afor-mentioned harmonica, whilst maintaining the great guitareering. From then on it's slower, much more blue, but no less brilliant. These tracks make you feel lazy, until track 10, when it throws once again the rock guitaring and crashy drums at you with Let's build a home. The next track follows its example, and then its back to blues. The last track, a cover of Your Southern Can Is Mine is great, just like the whole damn album.
Just buy it. Please.

Only a few bands in history have been as consistantly excellent for their first four albums as the White Stripes. The Beatles, The Smiths, and Radiohead are the only three that come to mind(if I left anybody out let me know). The most obvious differences between De Stijl and the self titled album are the songwriting and the production. Jack's writing matured quite a bit on De Stijl, and the production is more polished, yet still raw enough to be considered vintage Stripes. "You're pretty good looking (for a girl)" is a solid opening track and more accessible than "Jimmy the Exploder" from the debut album. "Hello Operator" and "Little Bird" are two classic White Stripes songs. They feature some great blues guitar and Meg's thumping drums provide plenty of rhythm. Jack's voice is awesome as always, and it is a shame that he doesn't get more credit for his terrific vocals. On "I'm bound to pack it up" Jack plays a stand up bass. The song also features violin and maracas. Of course the cover of Son House's "Death Letter" is electrifying(they played the song live at the grammys recently, much to my delight). "Truth doesn't make a noise" is a mid-tempo acoustic piece with a piano accompaniement in a Dylan-esque tradition. "Let's build a home" is one of the best songs on the album. It's fast and to the point with some slide guitar mixed in between verses. They close the album with "Your southern can is mine", a very catchy acoustic blues sing along which is the perfect ending to The White Stripes most bluesy album. It will be nice to sit down and listen to this in about thirty years and just reminisce.

I don't even know where to start with this album. Is it blues-punk-garage-retro rock? There are lots of diverse elements here, but suffice to say that it somehow manages to take completely anachronistic sounds and make them sound fresh. Those oddly rustic guitars, the boyish vocals, the simple drumming, it all sounds out of place in this era, as if Jack and Meg White stayed under a rock for a quarter century and then came out and started making music. And then on track four, "Apple Blossom," they throw in a piano? What's going on here? Somehow, though, the album's stripped-down sound and lo-fi production just work. Jack White combines his acoustic guitar strumming with lots of bluesy licks and riffs, and Meg's insistent drumming propels the songs forward effectively. The vocals are another high point, as Jack comes out sounding like Mick Jagger on "You're Pretty Good Looking," and at other times sounds boyishly innocent. The album does start to slow down a little during the middle, but just then it comes back to life with hard-rocking numbers like "Let's Build a Home" and "Jumble, Jumble." Music made by two people, sounding like it was recorded in a garage, has no right to pack this much of a punch. But it does. The conviction the White Stripes bring to their music alone would be enough to give them a listen.

In De Stijl the Stripes arrive with thunder in the arena. Jack and Meg White (not brother and sister either - they used to be married) firmly plant themselves into rock history with this one. Somebody else said Jack sounds like some kind of Robert Plant novice on De Stijl (I agree), but when he gets to the next album (Cells) he becomes what Curt Cobain should have done eventually with Nirvanna or what Mick could have been if he had taken Jumpin' Jack Flash to the limit. So listen to this one knowing what is coming next is even better.

The Stripes don't sound like anybody else (no matter how hard we all try to draw parallels). Legions of other bands will be compared to them, not the other way around.

You're Pretty Good Looking let's Jack's guitar open throttle, not to mention setting his voice way back in your head where it won't go away. Sister, Truth, Pack It Up....all great tunes.....oh yeah, and what on earth possessed Meg for that rim solo on Hello Operator....that one won't go away either. There is way too much sound here for two people.....that other stuff you hear in the space in between is the sound of original rock lightning......and it's rare......there hasn't been a band like this one in 10 years. The only problem is somebody needs to help Jack with his lyrics.....house-couch-mouse......Jack....listen to some old Dylan or something, will ya?

Stripes make you realize that even if Green Day were the best of their era, this is how much better they could have been; this is how the Stones must have sounded at the Crawdaddy Club in 64; this is why all those hype-bands like the Hives & Vines will never last; this is nothing less than the start of the 3rd age of rock and roll. These guys have it.....the blinding future of rock may be in their hands.

I feel a little ridiculous using the comparison, considering the fact that I *love* most of 'Revolver' and am ambivalent towards most of 'Sgt. Pepper', but I think that the Stripes' latest album 'White Blood Cells' could be likened to the former effort by the Beatles. It shows a fantastically talented band stretching out into new territory, while seeming a taster for even more ambitious things around the corner. 'De Stijl', by that logic, would be the Stripes' 'Rubber Soul', as they incorporate more variables into their stripped-down formula for neo-classic rock.

"You're Pretty Good Looking" is one of the all-time great opening tracks, with stop-start dynamics copped from various punk acts throughout time. "Hello Operator" turns a jump-rope rhyme into a desperate plea. Three-quarters through "Little Bird", it sounds like Jack is mucking with the tape speed as he speeds up and slows down his guitar solo. Other standouts include the weary, acoustic "I'm Bound to Pack It Up", playa-hata call-out "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise" and the screaming noise-fest "Let's Build a Home" that starts out with a tape of a child singing a song he's written, underlining the innocence of the band's lyrics. "Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me?" is about as straightforward and yearning as love songs get.

Throughout the proceedings, Meg White helps hold down the low end by alternately attacking the drum set like John Bonham on a particularly bad mental health day and insistently tapping like Maureen Tucker on some of the Velvets' mellower tracks. Jack White is, simply put, a garage rock virtuoso of the highest order, and pens lyrics like a nine-year-old Bob Dylan. Between 'De Stijl' and Nirvana's unplugged album, I'm now fairly intent on exploring the roots of rock music. The Stripes are historians of the first order and will keep the ghost of rock's glory days alive well into the twenty-first century, doubtless.

This album is a must-own, period. If you thought a guitarist and a drummer couldn't rock like any other band prepare to be proven wrong! "De Stijl" is arguably the best Stripes album with every track being not only memorable and fun but filled with interesting lyrics. Like a modern day Bob Dylan, The Stripes keep churning out music worth repeated listens and for this alone it deserves a place in your record collection along with the rest of the their albums currently available. Jack White is a great singer and pretty good guitarist - he's got a lot of charisma and charm. The lyrics are always very well written and sometimes pretty quotable (they're definitely worth anazlying). Musically it's pretty simple stuff, but that's what's so great about it - it's minimalistic but somehow still manages to be highly engaging (you'll understand once you hear it - it's very hard-rockin'). I couldn't recommend this album enough - along with "White Blood Cells" this is a MUST-have!

Highlights include:
the whole album!

Although White Blood Cells is Jack and Meg's commercial success, and Elephant is a very solid album, in my opinion De Stijl really captures what the White Stripes are about. It's much rawer than White Blood Cells or Elephant, but more tuneful than the debut, and is a very solid attempt at bluesy garage rock.

Well, for one thing De Stijl sounds very, very garagey. The production is gritty and honest, with almost no studio gloss present. The minimalist approach works wonders here.

Jack White is an excellent guitarist, and very proficient at the open-A, slide guitar blues of this album. His overpowering, rich guitar totally eclipses the need for a base player. On De Stijl, his vocals sound like that of a young Robert Plant. Although Meg is not the most competent drummer out there, she merely functions to keep time while Jack rips away on his guitar. Lyrics are simple yet often profound, with no pretension or angst rife among nu-metal bands these days.

Highlights include You're Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl), Hello Operator (got to love Meg's "solo"), Apple Blossom, I'm Bound To Pack It Up, Death Letter (my favorite), Truth Doesn't Make A Noise, and the hard rockers Let's Build A Home and Jumble Jumble. If there's a throwaway track, it's probably the weak cover of Your Southern Can Is Mine--way too much country for my liking.

This is the best White Stripes release, and captures everything good about this duo without overproduction or gimmicks. Recommended.

De Stijl seems to be the least common of the White Stripes albums, yet I cannot understand why this is so. I would consider this C.D. to be by far their best, for it is full of all sorts of fascinating rock genres that all seem to be areas of expertise for the band. While many of the songs have a sort of old school rock feel to them, some are completely modern: such as "Hello Operator". This track (which I believe to be the best Stripes song yet) has wild harmonica, an unbelievably catchy guitar rhythm which sets the beat, and at times a cool plucking noise. Then there is the song "Let's Build a Home" which starts off with a random conversation, then bursts into a melody somewhat similar to a song by the Kings of Leon. Aside from these, there are also sweet jives like "Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me" and songs with only acoustic guitar, such as "Your Southern Can Is Mine". Overall, this album has an overwhelming amount of A+ rock. Any White Stripes fan should love it to death, but I would also recommend De Stijl to any rock fan.

As the liner notes say, "Even if the goal of achieving beauty from simplicity is aesthetically less exciting it may force the mind to acknowledge the simple components that make the complicated beautiful."

Simplicity is key here, although this album is a tad more sophisticated than its predecessor. The songs encompass a much broader range of musical style, centered around delta blues riffs and chilling vocals. Many of the songs (about half) have a much slower tempo and a more indie feel than the stuff on the first album. The remaining songs are pure, raw, foot stomping madness that only these two could pull off.

Overall, a great CD, but I prefer the dirtier, gritier feel of their earlier releases.