KEY POINTS:
They might look like a couple of lost Cockneys on the cover. And Jack White might have made the best record of the White Stripes' post-underground period in another band - last year's Broken Boy Soldiers by the Raconteurs. And their last piano and marimba-heavy album Get Behind
Me Satan was a bit all over the shop.
But it would appear that on this, the White Stripes' sixth album, they have not lost the will to rock. In fact, there will possibly be no more thrilling riff attack in 2007 than on the opening title track.
Like they have before, Jack and Meg White seems to channel Led Zeppelin into four minutes of stop-start excitement complete with Mexican a gonzoid lyrical tale containing a sly commentary on US immigration policy, with Jack playing both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to Meg's best John Bonham.
It's a riveting start to an album which, initially at least, sounds like more of a natural counterpart to 2003's breakthrough Elephant than the parlour weirdness of Satan.
There's a couple more powerhouse numbers in You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told) - which can sound like Dylan's Quinn The Eskimo crossed with Joan Jett's I Love Rock'n'Roll - as well as Bone Broke, and another gear-crunching Zeppelinesque epic 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues which might start off with a reflective acoustic twang but explodes at intervals throughout.
But just as Icky Thump seems set to blaze, the Stripes start going a bit dotty.
There's Conquest, a piece of mariachi-styled pop kitsch first made popular by Patti How Much is That Doggie in the Window Page in the 1950s which, here delivered as a shrill metal flamenco sounds like it's auditioning for a Tarantino soundtrack.
Then there's Prickly Thorn, which starts off as hand-me-down in Zeppelin in hurdy-gurdy mandolin-folk mode but soon is away with the faeries, especially when it segues into the Celtic skirl of St. Andrew (This Battle is The Air) on which Meg recites an ode to the patron saint of Scotland. Hoots mon, indeed.
After that, well there are still plenty of guitar thrills - Jack White remains the most exciting axeman of this rock age, proven again on the showy slide-guitar heavy Catch Hell Blues.
But by the end it still feels like the 13 songs have overstayed their welcome, even if late in the piece they're still managing to raise smiles on the likes of Rag & Bone, on which the pair extol the virtues of grabbing second-hand stuff.
Yep, Icky Thump starts off garage rock and ends up garage sale. It's also an album that reminds just how big and exciting a noise the two of them can still make - but just how wilfully eclectic they can be too.
Label: XL
Verdict: Frequently thrilling but often frustrating sixth album from the Detroit duo