The White Stripes - "Rag and Bone"

It's no secret that I love me some White Stripes and shower them with fanboy-type praise nearly every opportunity I get. Well, tonight there's another good reason to do just that. A special 7" vinyl of the Stripes' "Rag and Bone" came packaged with the new issue of NME Magazine, which hit newsstands today. The 7" is the first official hard copy taste of the duo's highly anticipated new album Icky Thump, due June 18th. Although already released on iTunes, the physical copy of upcoming album's first single and awesome title track will be released on Tuesday. The full album is also becoming quite leaky, but don't tell Jack White...ole boy gets rather pissed (understandably, I suppose) about these things. While a number of the initial leaks were of rather low quality, excellent quality rips have started showing up on the intertubes as of late. I've resisted the temptation to seek out the suspect quality leaks because I don't wanna spoil the experience of first hearing this album by listening to crappy quality MP3s. As of this writing, I've only heard "Icky Thump" and "Rag and Bone". But based on the quality of these tunes, "I'm finding it harder to be a gentleman [and hold back] every day". (sorry, it was way too obvious)

"Rag and Bone" creeps in with a nice little blues boogie guitar line and brief dialogue between Jack and Meg. It steadily gains steam through the verse and chorus, followed by another bit of clever dialogue concerning the duo's ever-growing urge to get their hands on goods contained in the "mansion" introduced early in the song. The best snippet comes when Jack chides his counterpart with the hilarious, "Oh Meg, don't be rude" at the 2:30 point. Just listen to it, you'll definitely agree. The Stripes are the only band in the universe that could take a song this simple and turn it into a 3 minute, 45 second slice of brilliance that completely transcends its component parts. Forgive my "uber-hyperbole", but these guys make it super hard to disguise my excitement. Speaking of which, during the course of drafting this post, I've officially decided I cannot wait any longer to hear this album in its entirety. Please forgive me, Jack.

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