The White Stripes
Get Behind Me Satan
Release Date: Jun 7, 2005
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: V2 / XL
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Album Review: Get Behind Me Satan by The White Stripes
Very Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
But despite Get Behind Me Satan's hairpin turns, its inspired imagery and complicated feelings about love hold it together. Though "the ideal of truth" sounds cut-and-dried, the album is filled with ambiguities; even its title, which shortens the biblical phrase "get thee behind me Satan," has a murky meaning -- is it support, or deliverance, from Lucifer that the Stripes are asking for? There are pleading rockers, like the alternately begging and accusatory "Red Rain," and defiant ballads, like "I'm Lonely (But I'm Not That Lonely Yet)," which has a stubborn undercurrent despite its archetypal, tear-in-my-beer country melody. Even Get Behind Me Satan's happiest-sounding song, the joyfully backwoods "Little Ghost," is haunted by loving someone who might not have been there in the first place.
Based on rating 3/5
One thing rock music doesn't seem to care for in 2005 is progression. The three biggest albums of the year will all be on the shelves by Monday. The one thing that binds them, apart from their serried release dates and the weight of public expectation, is the fact that all are by artists that stubbornly refuse to move on. Oasis won't leave the Beatles impersonations behind out of loyalty to their lumpen fan-base, who think that musical progression is for softies.