White Stripes Icky Thump the hell out of Californication

About a week ago I got the new White Stripes CD Icky Thump (2007). After spending the previous album, Get Behind Me Satin (2005), doing the "artistic thing" (i.e., follow up a successful album with one that completely ditches the established sound of the artist) and getting sidetracked with the Rancontours, Jack and Meg White return with their two person alt blues groove intact.

If anything, the guitar has a greater presence than before. All of the Blues missing from Satin returns for Icky Thump with a vengence. Songs like the title track, "Rag and Bone" and "You Don't Know What Love Is" hit hard with cutting riffs, rumbling drums and pinched howl vocals. The songs are consistently good, particularly the horn laden "Conquest" that sounds like bullfighter music from the 60's.

Icky Thump does lack that killer track to make the album seem like more than a sum of its parts. Nothing here excites quite as much as "Fell In Love With A Girl" or "Seven Nation Army". The album does set itself apart from previous efforts with a new fixation on classic hard rock. Influences from Led Zep, Bad Company and even Van Halen show up. This isn't bad in itself, but following both the Black Keys and Wolfmother into this territory means for the first time the Stripes don't seem cutting edge. While that is mildly disappointing, overall Icky Thump delivers a strong set of blues rock without any guilt.

If only the same could be said of the new Showtime cable series Californication (2007). Former X file David Duchoveny plays Hank , a successful author who is depressed over his divorce and writers block. To make up for his depression, Hank manages to sleep with every available woman in LA. Duchoveny uses his famous droll, deadpan delivery to underscore the detachment of his character. Sadly, watching this program will make you more detached than anything Duchoveny can come up with. It seemed like a show that had been done before, there's the ex wife that knows leaving is best for her but can't stay away, the precocious child who is learning about sex and drugs, the happy agressive agent who looks out for his client personally and the girl who turns out to be the wrong one to sleep with. The only thing that sets this apart from, say, a Fox network show is the blatant nudity that is used to yell "Hey, we're a premium cable show and not Fox!" Californication is one X File that needs to go missing, fast.