Coolest band on planet with energy to burn

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Thank goodness he was playing injured.

For if Jack White - the singing and guitaring half of the White Stripes, the Detroit duo who have somehow managed to become this year's coolest band on the planet - had been 100 per cent then we'd be talking absolute besotted gibberish.

Which we may do anyway, for the White Stripes at the St James was a religious experience, even if White claimed in these pages last weekend that he still hasn't fully recovered from a smashed index finger sustained in a car crash a few months back.

By the sound of it his physiotherapist - or perhaps it was a faith healer, given the fervour of the performance - deserves a raise, or a medal.

The boy sure can play geetar, gammy finger or no. At this sell-out show on the band's third visit, but the first since breaking out of cultdom and this year's breakthrough album Elephant, White Stripes showed the post-accident may well have manifested itself in the release of all that pent-up energy.

The performance showed that despite their minuscule numbers, they are well capable of thriving in the brighter spotlight that's shining on them these days.

They can work the big rooms without losing the weird chemistry of their double-act or the intimate edginess of their sound, a garage full of damaged blues, punk, and country propelled by Jack's hollering voice and howling guitar and offsider Meg's keep-it-simple-stupid drumming.

The 90-minute set picked the eyes out of Elephant and predecessor White Cells, leaving out for the bigger production numbers from the latter.

If it was remarkable how much noise these two folks can produce, it also showed they're not afraid of quiet either - whether it was Meg coming out front for torch tune In the Cold, Cold Night , Jack cooing teen anthem I Want To Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart accompanying himself on electric piano, or delivering their firecracker version of Bacharach-David, I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself.

Yes, there was also rock'n'roll of various rpms and muscular, astounding and askew guitar solos - possibly at best on the slow, low-slung blues of Ball and Biscuit. And it was superb, every colour-co-ordinated minute of it.

In support, fellow uniformed Michigan-ites Whirlwind Heat were a jerky treat. A trio of drums, bass and singer who occasionally beat sounds of his Moog synthesizer, they might not have had any songs that stuck, but their oddball energy was still stupidly infectious.

Review

* Who: White Stripes

* Where: St James