“We’re Going to Be Friends” gets gentle drum accompaniment, “I Think I Smell a Rat” and “Aluminum” become even more chaotic bruisers than they already were, and truly every song in the album’s back half (or, everything after “The Union Forever”) feels like it’s more feral than it is on record. Marvel at how the somehow-weirder “Little Room” crashes into “The Union Forever” and how its quasi-a cappella breakdown turns into a frantic, hoarse shout, and how much room exists in the spaces of “I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentlemen” and how it actually makes the song even more lovable in the process. It also allows for these songs to move more fluidly together.

Though not the most crystal-clear recording, the Gold Dollar show helps capture the raw energy that the White Stripes were able to bring to these songs. Rather than packing it to the gills with demos or outtakes, we get the entirety of a performance at Detroit’s Gold Dollar in 2001, in which they play the album front-to-back just a few days after its release. The anniversary of an album with the stature of White Blood Cells means the inevitable deluxe edition, and despite being on Third Man Records, this deluxe edition is extremely tasteful. It’s unlikely that they’d even be better songs with the addition – raucous bangers like “I Think I Smell a Rat” and the atmospheric, Citizen Kane send-up “The Union Forever” need nothing else, and certainly they don’t need a bassist to elevate them. The White Stripes have always been the subject of fierce debate over whether they lose anything in just being a guitarist and drummer, but it’s easy to glide through the entirety of White Blood Cells without ever remembering that you don’t have more. The one-two punch of “Expecting” and “Little Room” help us to get a clear look at Meg White’s simple-but-effective drumming style, and she steals the show on these two songs. It contains “Fell in Love with a Girl,” maybe still the Stripes’ best song, one that accomplishes everything in less than two minutes. This streak continues for seven more songs after “Dead Leaves,” derailed only by the quiet stunner “We’re Going to Be Friends.” And even then, it’s not that the momentum is ruined, but merely slowed briefly.Īnd who could blame the duo for slowing up a bit? The first half of White Blood Cells is a thrill ride. Opener “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” remains essentially flawless, presenting us with something akin to a “Best of the White Stripes” crammed into one song, both shredding and mellow, shouty and mumbly, its riffs addicting earworms, ones that would tower over everything around it in normal circumstances, but here are just as good as every other song. Even more, it’s relentlessly kickass, no matter what mood it gets into. So, let’s get this out of the way: White Blood Cells is just a kickass record.

This is a difficult task, in the same way that it’s difficult to strip away the context of Turn on the Bright Lights-era Interpol or the varied career of Kanye West viewing these documents clearly will never cease to be an odd and difficult thing.

In order to really examine White Blood Cells, it helps a lot to strip back all of the context surrounding the Stripes and their legacy, and simply examine what kind of record it was. Even 20 years after their still-unfuckwithable breakthrough – White Blood Cells, though the argument can easily be made for De Stijl being that flashpoint – into the wider audiences that would grow to associate them with sporting events and LEGO animation, the answers are still unclear. Were they a groundbreaking garage revival act that created a ripple effect in rock music? Were they highly-pretentious rip-off artists wholesale stealing sounds from Black artists and getting huge off the aesthetic they pilfered? Were they just a very good band? Are they all of these things at once? It’s hard to say – the adoration and backlash have lasted the exact same amount of time – less than a year after White Blood Cells, Britt Daniel of Spoon was singing “ I don’t dig the Stripes but I’ll go for Har Mar” on “Small Stakes,” a subtle attempt at taste alignment that felt both pretentious and cheekily-charming in their Kill the Moonlight glow. To discuss the legacy of the White Stripes is a complicated matter, and one that can feel almost too boring to really even dig into.

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