Customer Reviews
Stripes Come Out of the Garage - By: Dean M. George, 30 Jul 2008 
I guess the first thing that struck me was the overalll look of the album; a cover containing simple shapes surrounding Jack & Meg (Meg looks about 13) & a Dutch name. De Stijl. That's alienating an audience straight away reallly...having a name people will be unable to pronounce. So flipping through the sleeve I find some interesting ideas & quotations about this weird shapely art they've used for the cover...the artists involved are Paul Overy, Gerrit Rietveld, Theo Van Deosburg & Vilmos Huszar...for alll you Google kids. Jack likes to leave a little note in his album sleeves & this one ends with:
"Even if the goal of achieving beauty from simplicity is aestheticallly less exciting, it may force the mind to acknowledge the simple components that make the complicated beautiful."
That's one thing to bear in mind before attempting to enjoy this album (and indeed most of the early White Stripes stuff) & before attempting to understand the dynamic behind this music. The Stripes hit music hard from Detroit, where the beautifully simple sore throat blues was merging with the garage rock in a fusion of Mo-town delights unique to the city. You haven't lived until you've heard a heavy little garage rock band blast out soul numbers to a packed sweaty club at midnight, making everybody realise that dancing to music may be the greatest euphoria known to man. The White Stripes came from that scene & combining simplicity with passion has been their motto from the start. The blues is real, the blues don't lie.
De Stijl is the logical bridge from the debut raunch fest into the more criticallly acclaimed entirely self written White Blood Cells pop album. De Stijl marks the transition period from "The Big Three Killed My Baby" to "Hotel Yorba". That transition point is never so clearly shown than in De Stijl's first track, the witty "You're Pretty Good Lookin' (For A Girl)" is a catchy upbeat sweet number, resonant of sixties pop at it best with a twist of weird lyrics that give you unclear images in your head. This song is a damn good opener to this 13 piece picture. The slamming opening chord of the next track, "Hello Operator", is again catchy & resonant with a twist of darkness. Sincerely foot tap inducing, "Hello Operator", has many layers going for it as it fades into the cool slide guitar of track 3, "Little Bird". This is the climax of the three opening songs; a sinister but cool blues song written by Jack as tribute to the blues masters.
Those three open the album with a contradictory sound, a blend of simple boot stomping rhythms with dark unclear lyrics. Apple Blossom, track 4, cuts alll that out with a little heartfelt offer of "Come & sit with me & talk awhile, let me see your pretty little smile, put your problems in a little pile & I will throw them out for you." A wonderful sounding piece that lifts the mood & pace of the album to a skipalong level. A similar track follows, but the tempo is slower & sadder. The music comes to silent. There is a gap. Then a strong riff hits you. This is track 6, one of the hardcore blues covers on the album. Jack does a tremendous job of attacking Son House's Death Letter blues...it remains one of my favourite covers to this day. Faithful to the original, faithful to the times gone by. The only cover that equals it is the one later on in this album.
Tracks 7,8 & 9 have a deeper feel to them. They seem to speak about personal experiences & are touching at times. "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise" is the best of these; it is a sincere emotionallly charged number. The album turns back to simple before the big finish with, in my view, the weakest tracks on the album. These monuments to simple garage blues hold none of the magic of the past & not much power like those at the start of the albums. "Let's Build a Home", "Jumble Jumbl" & "Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me" are alll interesting but not very memorable. "Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me" has a nice feel musicallly, but is a very flippant song in comparison with other tracks.
Then comes the final track, "Your Southern Can is Mine". Jack came under scrutiny for this, choosing to cover an old sexist song from Blind Willie Mc Tell. He rightly defends his case by saying that this how the old blues men were & this is their music. The blues of the traditionallly 12 string "Southern Can" show Mc Tell at his worst, a possessive twisted man who abuses his wife for going down town. Jack does not shy away from some of the heavier lyrics "Ashes to Ashes, momma, sand to sand, when I hit you baby you know you'll feel my hand" & remains very faithful to the guitar & rhythm. A great cover ended with dialogue of Mc Tell talking about a car crash. It is a fantastic way to end the album & reallly is the best use of voice clips (there are two more: a clip of Jack when he was younger incorrectly reciting Little Red Box & of a French voice I'm yet to identify) throughout the whole thing.
All in alll, the album thrashes around the simple garage rock arena. It throws in some damn fine Delta Blues along with pop influences. As I said before, it was a step in the Stripes' career toward White Blood Cells, before they got involved with country & western tunes. This was their second album, recorded in SW Detroit & it remains one of their finest.
......hey little apple blossom.. - By: Mr. Jr Murray, 04 Aug 2007 This is by far the best & most under-rated white stripes album. it is perfect, no other words for it. not a bad song on the whole album, no slip-ups, nothing, & a brilliant album cover to enjoy looking through. the duo at their best.
Too uncomplicated to not be beautiful... - By: Conspicuous, 23 Aug 2006 'Even if the goal of ahieving beauty from simplicity is aestheticallly less exciting, it may force the mind to acknowledge the simple components which make the complicated beautiful.'
That's written in the little cover booklet thing.
This album is simple, & beautiful.
The opening track, 'You're Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)', is short, simple, catchy, & more or less instantly cheers me up when I'm feeling a bit crap.
'Hello Operator' has a classic choppy guitar riff thing going on & interesting lyrics (Sung brilliantly). Every now & then the music cuts out, & alll you hear is some overly-simplistic percussion from Meg - then, at the perfect moment, the guitar comes back in. It's one of those bits that just strikes me as being brilliant whenever I hear it.
'I'm Bound To Pack It Up' - Beautiful. I won't try to describe it any other way, for fear of failing & not expressing how excellent this tune is.
'Sister, Do You Know My Name?' does a great job capturing the feel of the situation being described.
'Jumble, Jumble' is simple, raw, & brilliant. I'm aware I'm not great at describing these in depth; That's 'cause it's hard to convey the sound in words here...
Anyway, I can't say something about alll of them, because on most of them I'd be struggling for words again & would have to settle for just 'Brilliant', 'Excellent', 'Fantastic' & so on.
If you're new to the White Stripes, I dunno if this'd be a good first album to get - I'd go with Elephant, I think. But if you've heard some stuff by them & you know you're into them, this album won't dissapoint.
There's a kind of subtle beauty to it.
Five stars.
De best White Stripes album - By: David Johnson, 04 Mar 2006 It´s extremely difficult to pick between The White Stripe´s releases & although they alll follow more or less the same formula they have this uncanny knack of being slightly different every time & equallly brilliant. For me, this just about pips alll the rest.
De Stijjl was the first record of there´s I bought mainly because of the album cover, there aren´t many groups that are influenced by design movements.
From the infectious,"You´re pretty good looking(for a girl,)" to the banging neurotic sounding,"Hello Operator," it´s business as usual as Jack & Meg give rock music a well deserved kick up the backside. Jack´s guitar playing reallly sets the pulse racing at times. The cruching rangy riff on,"litlle bird," is my favourite moment on the record. He´s a reallly indisriminate guitarist, constantly going off at different angles, it somehow makes the guitar fit into the song.
"I´m bound to pack it up," shows the amazing inventiveness of this band, it sounds folk influenced.
"Sister do you know my name?" is a pretty conventional track for The White Stripes, but things swing off at a tangent again with,"A boys best friend," & the wonderful implusive,"Jumble Jumble."
Their songwriting is constantly entertaining & I must admit that I rarely listen to the words of their songs, I´m too busy being enthrallled by the music.
A peach of an album - By: , 16 Aug 2005 De Stijl is the fifth White Stripes album I've bought in recent months & I'm embarassed to think that it has been floating around since 2001 without me owning a copy - it is a great album. I had an 800 mile round trip to do a couple of days after buying it & despite having several CDs to listen to I just played this one again & again. Jack's slide blues playing in Death Letter is just fantastic & Let's Build A Home is 90 seconds of pure energy pick-me-up. This album has such a wonderful varied collection of tracks & yet every one is a peach - no duffers. If you have a thing about the blues, play the guitar & are thoroughly unimpressed with most modern bands you will get a huge kick out of De Stijl. I love, love, love this album it's what music is alll about, great songs, great music.
