Performer Notes
- The White Stripes: Jack White (vocals, guitar, piano); Meg White (drums).
- Additional personnel: Holly Golightly (vocals); Mort Crim (spoken vocals).
- Recorded at Toe-Rag Studios and BBC Maida Vale Studio, London, England in April 2002.
- ELEPHANT won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. The album was also nominated for Album Of The Year. "Seven Nation Army" won for Best Rock Song. The song was also nominated for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal
- Lo-fi in production and uncompromising in approach, ELEPHANT finds The White Stripes continuing to walk to the beat of their own pomo blues drummer in ignoring the enormous expectations heaped on the follow-up to 2001's smash WHITE BLOOD CELLS. Recorded in two weeks, this outing is packed with loose, soulful, and delightfully unpretentious songs that rage and howl. Jack and Meg White hit the ground running with the chugging shuffle "Seven Nations," with its infectious bass line and thudding cadence.
- Surprises abound, from the wall of Queen-like harmonies that infuse the choppy, psychedelia-tinged "There's No Room for You Here" or a reading of Burt Bacharach's "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" bursting at the seams with distorted guitar. Not surprisingly, the blues are never far from the equation, particularly on the heavy stomper "Ball and Biscuit" with its bursts of screaming guitar solos. Equally impressive is Jack White's slide guitar on the pleading "I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart" and six-string histrionics on the chugging "Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine" that shakes and shimmies with Stooges-like aggression.
Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/25/03, p.111) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Best Albums of 2003"
Rolling Stone (4/17/03, p.102) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...There are still only two of them, but now they sound like an army....Equal measure of Lightnin' Hopkins' crude strum, Marc Bolan's sequined boogie and the cut-'n'-thrust song hooks of the Buzzcocks..."
Spin (5/03, pp.107-8) - "...A remarkably good record, quite possibly a great record....This is not garage rock; this is art rock: And that's a compliment..." - Grade: A
Entertainment Weekly (12/26/03-1/2/04, p.140) - Ranked #1 in Entertainment Weekly's 2003 "Records of the Year"
Entertainment Weekly (4/04/03, pp.98-99) - "...Jack is a top-notch frontman, a charismatic yowler with a seemingly endless supply of brilliantly simplistic guitar riffs that often find fresh musical twists on tired rock & roll cliches..." - Rating: B
Q (01/01/04, p.84) - Ranked #1 in Q's "The 50 Best Albums of 2003" - "[A] record that made white-boy blues sound like pop music for the first time in over 30 years..."
Uncut (01/04, pp.84-7) - Ranked #23 in Uncut's "Albums Of The Year 2003"
Uncut (5/03, pp.94-5) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...ELEPHANT features a group at their peak, rejoicing in basic forms while bursting beyond their limitations....They are quite simply in a league of their own..."
Magnet (4/03, pp.109-111) - "...It sounds warm and well-aged....At the core is Jack's increasingly stunning songwriting..."
CMJ (12/29/03, p.4) - Ranked #1 in CMJ's "Top 10 of 2003"
CMJ (04/07/03, p.8) - "...With Meg's perfectly imperfect drumming and Jack's Detroit wail excavating Jon Spencer or Plant or Willie Dixon, the divinely sloppy and unadorned ELEPHANT is RAW POWER with a GED..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.67) - Ranked #8 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "Emotionally, the needle rarely drops beneath total overload."
Mojo (Publisher) (01/01/04, p.62) - Ranked #1 in Mojo's "The Best of 2003"
Mojo (Publisher) (4/03, pp.88-90) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Where ELEPHANT differs from what has gone before is in terms of quality. It's just better all round: consistently better songs, more explosive performances - and, when required, more tender performances..."
