According to Jack White, Get Behind Me Satan deals with "characters and the ideal of truth," but in truth, the album is just as much about what people expect from the White Stripes and what they themselves want to deliver.
Advance publicity for the album stated that it was written on piano, marimba, and acoustic guitar, suggesting that it was going to be a quiet retreat to the band's little room after the big sound, and bigger success, of Elephant.
Then "Blue Orchid," Get Behind Me Satan's lead single, arrived.
A devilish slice of disco-metal with heavily processed, nearly robotic riffs, the song was thrilling, but also oddly perfunctory; it felt almost like a caricature of their stripped-down but hard-hitting rock.
As the opening track for Get Behind Me Satan, "Blue Orchid" is more than a little perverse, as though the White Stripes are giving their audience the required rock single before getting back to that little room, locking the door behind them, and doing whatever the hell they want.
Even Jack White's work on the Cold Mountain soundtrack and Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose isn't adequate preparation for how far-flung this album is: Get Behind Me Satan is a weird, compelling collection that touches on several albums' worth of sounds, and its first four songs are so different from most of the White Stripes' previous music -- as well as from each other -- that, at first, they're downright disorienting.
As if the red herring that is "Blue Orchid" isn't enough warning that Get Behind Me Satan is designed to defy expectations, "The Nurse"'s ironically perky marimbas and off-kilter stabs of drums and guitar -- not to mention lyrics like "the nurse should not be the one who puts salt in your wounds" -- make its domestic skulduggery one of the most perplexing and eerie songs the White Stripes have ever recorded (although Meg's brief cameo, "Passive Manipulation," which boasts the refrain "you need to know the difference between a father and a lover," rivals it).
"My Doorbell," on the other hand, is almost ridiculously immediate and catchy, and with its skipping beat and brightly bashed pianos, surprisingly funky.
Meanwhile, "Forever for Her (Is Over for Me)" turns cleverly structured wordplay and those fluttering marimbas into a summery, affecting ballad.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blue Orchid | The White Stripes | Play | 02:38 | 6 MB | 16 MB |
| 2 | The Nurse | The White Stripes | Play | 03:47 | 8 MB | 20 MB |
| 3 | My Doorbell | The White Stripes | Play | 04:01 | 9 MB | 25 MB |
| 4 | Forever For Her (is Over For Me) | The White Stripes | Play | 03:15 | 7 MB | 19 MB |
| 5 | Little Ghost | The White Stripes | Play | 02:18 | 5 MB | 15 MB |
| 6 | The Denial Twist | The White Stripes | Play | 02:35 | 5 MB | 16 MB |
| 7 | White Moon | The White Stripes | Play | 04:01 | 9 MB | 20 MB |
| 8 | Instinct Blues | The White Stripes | Play | 04:16 | 9 MB | 24 MB |
| 9 | Passive Manipulation | The White Stripes | Play | 00:35 | 1 MB | 3 MB |
| 10 | Take, Take, Take | The White Stripes | Play | 04:22 | 10 MB | 29 MB |
| 11 | As Ugly As I Seem | The White Stripes | Play | 04:10 | 9 MB | 22 MB |
| 12 | Red Rain | The White Stripes | Play | 03:52 | 8 MB | 23 MB |
| 13 | I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet) | The White Stripes | Play | 04:21 | 9 MB | 21 MB |
| 44 mins | 101 MB | |||||
| 44 mins | 259 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | John Hampton | Audio Engineer |
| 2 | Adam Hill | Audio Engineer |
| 3 | The White Stripes | Primary Artist |
| 4 | Jack White | Audio Production, Guitar, Marimba, Member of Attributed Artist, Mixing, Piano, Tambourine, Vocals |
| 5 | Meg White | Bells, Drums, Member of Attributed Artist, Percussion, Triangle, Vocals |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |