Review of The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights (2009) by Sal P — 12 Aug 2010

There's a moment at the end of this film that I'm still trying to wrap my mind around. It's beautiful, it's heartbreaking, and my instincts tell me it's Jack and Meg's way of saying goodbye to the White Stripes. This tour should have been worldwide, yet Canada was the only big swing for their last (LAST?) album, "Icky Thump". Meg took mysteriously ill, and they haven't toured since. Jack has several other irons in the fire as of late, so anything new from the Stripes seems a long ways from now, if ever.

The film itself is a solid slice of life for the band and it's experience in the Great White North. Lots of surprise sets on buses and in pool halls, and plenty of locals mixing it up with the band, including a sit-down jam with an Inuit tribe and their elder.

Unlike the Blackpool dvd, this isn't a complete set from one show, but a collage from the entire Canadian tour. Highlights include "Jolene", "Seven Nation Army", "Black Math", "I wanna Be The Boy", and of all things, "Cold, Cold Night". Perhaps the finest musical moment for any dedicated fan is the last moment I mentioned above. Jack plays a song I've never heard before. It's beautiful, with lyrics that seem reflective of the bands body of work. The photography is tri-toned of course, black, white, and red.

The White Stripes has it's share of critics, Jack White especially. Some have called bullshit on what they consider a manufactured aesthetic. Jack even addresses the criticism in the film, quoting Spin magazine, who declared that 'everything about the White Stripes is a lie'. Yet anyone who's been with the band since it's earliest days will happily defend their pale heroes. This band has committed itself to a philosophy that believes in the innocence of art, music, and especially America and her musical roots, to which Jack White is unabashedly obsessed with. Fiercely dedicating himself to conserving things that the majority of the world considers disposable, Jack White is in love with the raggedy and old children's toy, the curled old photos in the garage, the faded hollywood starlets of an era long since dead, and most famously, the plastic red guitar in the garbage. He laments the fading of americana in the 21st century, and his songs, sometimes bitterly so, sing the praises of all the things that pop music has discarded and replaced with vanity, instant gratification, and notions of entitlement. If it is truly the end of the band, even if it was all just a put-on, The White Stripes are wholly unique, noisy, and beautiful. Their art remains leagues beyond damn near anything else in rock and roll today.