BY BRIAN McCOLLUM
FREE PRESS POP MUSIC CRITIC

In the little world of the White Stripes, a little is never nearly enough.

Friday night, for the first of this weekend's three sold-out shows at the Masonic Temple, Jack and Meg White delivered an intense, fast-paced performance in which simplicity was made elaborate, the primitive turned transcendent.


With Jack White ripping a nasty lick out of his familiar AirLine guitar, the duo crashed into "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" to open this homecoming date with about 4,500 fans.


For the next 100 minutes, the Detroit duo confirmed just how far they've come since their days playing dank Cass Corridor clubs down the street, crafting musical twists and turns whose rawness was matched by a knowing intelligence.


As always, charismatic Jack White was the star of the show, cramming nods to blues obscurities and country influences into the band's material as he elicited an array of tones from his instrument -- silver-hued darts of sound on "Blue Orchid," jagged menace on "Ball and Biscuit," fiery spirals of slide guitar on "Death Letter," the high point of the show.


When not dipping into the more eccentric and eclectic sounds of the new "Get Behind Me Satan" -- which often brought White to a grand piano -- the pair was happily toying with the older stuff, playing more than ever with tempo and timbre on such songs as "Fell in Love With a Girl" and "The Big Three Killed My Baby."


The White Stripes' taste for colorful imagery, both literal and figurative, has certainly helped drive the band's success -- White clearly has an intuitive grasp of rock's historical need for larger-than-life mythology. Friday's show confirmed that the line between the White Stripes' music and gimmickry, once firm and clear, has blurred with time.


Watching White seamlessly move from studied precision into primal abandon, it was hard not to sense that he has in some ways come to inhabit a grand character of his own design. And listening as songs tumbled into one another with glorious recklessness, as the bits and pieces of Dylan and Son House merged into one big sonic assault, it was hard not to sense that the White Stripes have once again found a new level of creative confidence and command.

http://www.freep.com/ente...051001.htm
Contact BRIAN McCOLLUM at 313-223-4450 or mccollum@freepress.com.

Thanks for posting. I love the Stripes!