LM: It's a theme that is reinforced by the video, as well — we see a ghostly Meg, a past vision, moving out of the house whilst a lost and wandering Jack climbs over the rubble of a relationship. This video, as with all their others, is available on the Official White Stripes Website.
GA: It's a take charge kind of love that will overcome resistance. The descending notes of Jack's opening guitar statement will grind resistance into dirt, like so many whining Smiths fans and goths beneath our jackboots. Hell, yeah!
As a note of personal testimonial, my first exposure to the White Stripes was when they played this song on Saturday Night Live. That was probably the biggest stopped-dead-by-a-new-thang musical moment I'd had since first hearing "When Doves Cry" in 1984.
LM: For me, it was "Fell In Love With a Girl," but I had the same stopped-dead, jaw-dropping OH MY GOD sort of reaction. It was only reinforced when I heard this song — which was the second I ever heard from Dear Leader and his filthy assistant.
"Dead Leaves," like the opening songs on all the White Stripes albums, sets the stage for everything that comes after. From the first electric puff of sound, we know this album is about the spectrum of human relationships and that we're going on a ride. And I might even make the leap and say that "Dead Leaves" encapsulates the White Stripes as a whole, that their entire being, their band-ness, if you will (observe as I create words and leap tall buildings in a single bound, chillun). If Elephant is the British album, and Get Behind Me Satan is experimental, and De Stijl is about the basics, then White Blood Cells is what being the White Stripes is all about. And "Dead Leaves" is the soul of the album.
Go back to the beginning of WHITE STRIPES NATION!
-------------------
LegendaryMonkey Alisha Karabinus provides the inner voice of sweet reason for evolved primates at Sudden Nothing.
Al Barger plots the overthrow of the government and his continuing crusade for Moorish dignity at More Things.
Article comments
1 - Zach
Neil Young is definitely a comparison I've never thought to draw. But now that you mention it: those high-pitched vocals, that crunchy melodic guitar... The more I think about it, Dead Leaves' monster riff is almost a perkier kissing cousin to Hey Hey My My.
Nice installment, this one definitely made me think about the Stripes in a new way.
2 - Generalissimo Alberto
Outstanding, Zach. El Presidente Jack White will no doubt consult regularly with Neil Young as an exalted senior adviser on affairs of guitar art.
3 - Alisha Karabinus
Guitar art being super important, by the by.
But you know, now we have to refer to Dear Leader as Three Quid, at least while he is away on affairs of state in the UK.