Posts Tagged ‘Third Man Records’

WSITRSD.jpg

Jack White’s label Third Man Records has already put the final album by the White Stripes back in circulation through their subscription-only Vault Series, packaging the 2007 release with a double-LP set of demos and tracks from the same sessions. This new edition is just the original LP, as it was originally released on vinyl, right down to the sticker placed in such a spot that it needs to be cut through to access the actual records. It’s a cute little trick but will surely leave collectors drooling over whether they can safely peel it off without it tearing or whether cutting into the album’s resale value will be worth it. Whatever your feelings on the matter are, it’s great to have the ultimate statement by Jack and Meg White brought back to the format that serves their high-wattage garage blues antics best.

The White Stripes seemed to have wandered far afield of the nervy electric blues of their breakthrough album “Elephant” with 2005’s gloomy “Get Behind Me Satan“. Then came “Icky Thump”, their last blast of garage-band glory.

This return-to-form LP arrived on June 15th, 2007, It couldn’t have had less in common with “Get Behind Me Satan”, which sold about half as much as 2003’s “Elephant” – a platinum smash that featured “Seven Nation Army.” The experience seemed to have stung singer/guitarist Jack White, who developed a newfound appreciation for remaining true to one’s roots.

“I told someone that one of these new songs could be an old 45 of ours,” White admitted in a 2007 talk with the New York Times. “And they said, would you want the Beatles to have ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ on the White Album? And I said, yeah, I would love that — what would be wrong with that?”

With “Icky Thump”, White’s stinging guitar moved forward where pianos and light orchestral arrangements once were. Tough, blues-inflected songs replaced the quiet balladry that dominated Get Behind Me Satan.

Credit must also go to a year spent on the road with White’s other band, the Raconteurs. The time away seemed to have sharpened his riffs to a razor’s edge – even as it loosened him up. “Rag and Bone,” a talking-blues in the style of John Lee Hooker, boldly recalled the White Stripes‘ fizzy initial successes, while “Little Cream Soda” grew out of an on-stage improvisation.

“You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You’re Told)” howled with an open-hearted, country-soul rawness, while two tracks (“Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn” and “St. Andrew”) featured a bagpipe. The White Stripes converted a video treatment by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry into a finished song (“I’m Slowly Turning Into You”), and even included a mariachi-driven cover of Patti Page’s “Conquest.”

“When it comes to the songs themselves, the songs are in charge – not me,” White told Reuters in 2007. “Take a song like ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told).’ That was pretty much a country song in my mind. If I really was in control I could have just said, ‘Hey, how dare you allow electric guitar and heavy organ on there,’ but I don’t do that. I let the song tell me what it wants.”

Recorded over three weeks with drummer Meg White in Nashville, “Icky Thump” also arrived as they made a seemingly uncomfortable shift to a major label. Hints came in the selection of “Conquest,” but also the subtext of this album’s gnarled title track – their first-ever Top 40 single. Both seemed to point to lingering trust issues for the White Stripes, those heroes of garage-rock outsider-dom. “Icky Thump” is “about people using other people,” White said in 2007. “The theme is ‘Who’s using who?'”

As with many bands who came before them, it seemed the White Stripes‘ long-awaited success simply created more pressure. “Icky Thump” scored a career-best but, like “Get Behind Me Satan“, that didn’t match the million-LP sales of “Elephant” or 2001’s “White Blood Cells“. An accompanying tour was cut short, with White citing Meg’s growing anxiety about performing, and the White Stripes went into an extended hiatus.

See the source image

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of White Blood Cells, Third Man Records is privileged to release “White Blood Cells XX”, the companion to The White Stripes’ universally acknowledged 2001 album. Disc one contains 13 tracks previously unreleased demos, outtakes, alternate takes and unheard work-in-progress nuggets. Disc two is a previously unreleased live recording from Headliner’s in Louisville, Kentucky on September. 6th, 2001.”

For a band widely defined by its self-imposed rules, the strictures employed on “White Blood Cells” (while seemingly overlooked by the general public) are largely responsible for its breakthrough nature. No blues, no guitar solos, no guest musicians, no cover songs, no bass. Think about that and let it sink in. All of these elements are used extensively across just about every other studio recording across the Stripes entire career. But as an attempt to deviate from the profile of “De Stijl” the previous year, these guidelines would help carve out this work of incredible stature. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of White Blood Cells, Third Man Records is privileged to release White Blood Cells XX, the companion to the White Stripes’ universally acknowledged 2001 album.

On July 3rd, 2001, the White Stripes released “White Blood Cells“, the album which would launch them to mainstream worldwide success.

The duo had spent their early years developing a passionate fanbase in their hometown of Detroit. Rousing performances at the local clubs had helped the White Stripes develop a reputation. Their self-titled 1999 debut album was a raw, unfiltered rush of frantic blues rock. Its follow-up, 2000’s De Stijl, found the group further forming their sound.

“There’s definitely a childishness in it,” Jack explained in 2000, while trying to describe his band’s style. “From Meg’s standpoint, the drumming is real primitive and I really love that. My voice, I think, sometimes sounds like a little kid. You see that approach in a lot of great bands, [for example] Iggy Pop throwing tantrums on stage. Everybody’s still that same person they were when they were young — at least they still want to be. They still want to have that freedom.”

Tours alongside Pavement and Sleater-Kinney took the White Stripes beyond the Motor City. Music fans and media alike were suddenly taking notice. As hype surrounding the band continued to grow, they retreated to Memphis to record a third album. To say that the sessions were a whirlwind would be an understatement.

“There were probably only three real days of recording,” Jack revealed “We really rushed the whole album, to get that feel to it, a real tense thing coming out of it.”

Engineer Stuart Sikes said that “we just set up and they started going. Jack knew what he wanted. Meg didn’t really think they should be recording: She thought the songs were too new. Jack pretty much knows what he wants, has a really good idea what he’s going for.”

Material for White Blood Cells was culled from a variety of sources. Some tracks were brand new, while others were leftovers from Jack’s previous band, 2 Star Tabernacle. “It was cool because a lot of things had been sitting around for a long time, stuff I had written on piano that had been just sitting around not doing anything,” said Jack “And it was good to put them all together at once, put them all in the same box and see what happened.”

Jack warned Sikes “more than once not to make it sound too good,”. “Basically he wanted it as raw as possible, but better than if it was recorded in somebody’s living room. He steered me that way, and I ran with it.”

The LP title and artwork would be reflective of the White Stripes’ ascent to fame. “The name, White Blood Cells, for the album, is this idea of bacteria coming at us – or just foreign things coming at us, or media, or attention on the band,” “It just seems to us that there are so many bands from the same time or before we started that were playing and are still playing that didn’t get this kind of attention that we’re getting. Is the attention good or bad?”

The results were met with critical acclaim: Uncut magazine compared the band to Zeppelin, while Pitchfork said the White Stripes “summon the Holy Spirit and channel it through 16 perfectly concise songs.” The New York Times argued that the band “made rock rock again by returning to its origins as a simple, primitive sound full of unfettered zeal.”

White Blood Cells was initially released on the indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry, but demand soon exceeded the company’s limits. Major labels came calling, including V2 Records.

“This was the type of band that I found completely fascinating musically and conceptually,” Andy Gershon, president of V2,. “When you look at it — the whole “brother-and-sister” thing, dressed in red and white, really raw — I figured this will never get on the radio. But I didn’t care about getting hits.”

Gershon’s instinct to sign the band was wise. However, his assumption that they wouldn’t have hits would be way off base.

The lead single “Fell in Love With a Girl” quickly became an alternative-radio mainstay, while its groundbreaking video – made with Lego blocks and directed by future Academy Award winner Micheal Gondry – earned heavy rotation on MTV.

Further gems included the fuzzed-out garage rocker “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” twangy “Hotel Yorba,” and the sweetly nostalgic “We’re Going to Be Friends.”

White Blood Cells would eventually sell more than a million copies in the U.S. Multiple outlets named it among the best albums of 2001 and (later) the top albums of the 2000s. The White Stripes performing “I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman” live at The Gold Dollar in Detroit, MI on June 7th, 2001. Listen to the original studio recording now in HD and the live version of “I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman” on the 20th Anniversary deluxe digital release of White Blood Cells

Through the excitement, media fanfare and being hailed rock’s latest savior, Jack stayed even keeled.

“In the end, it doesn’t really matter,” he said in 2003, “because I always think, in 20 years’ time, the only thing that’s going to be left is our records and photos. If we’re doing something meaningful with those, that’s what will live forever – so that’s what’s really important.”





Out on Third Man Records this July, Savages’ Jehnny Beth and Primal Screams’s Bobby Gillespie have teamed up for a collaboration album titled “Utopian Ashes”. The first single is a yearning, slow-burning ballad called “Remember We Were Lovers.” Beth and Gillespie first met in 2015, and over the years have performed alongside Suicide and the rest of Primal Scream.

For Utopian Ashes, the two explore fictional characters with a revived sense of ache. Inspired by classic country songwriter duets like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris’ “Grievous Angel” and George Jones and Tammy Wynette’s “We Go Together,” the two put themselves in the scenario of a crumbling marriage, one that continues to erode with emotional  inarticulacy and misperceptions.

“I wanted to put pain back into music. I wasn’t hearing a lot of it in modern rock music,” Gillespie said of the project.  “In the same way you create characters for a novel, we’ve created characters here,” Beth shared. “But you put yourself in it, because you’re trying to understand the human situation. The singing has to be authentic. That’s all that matters.”

“When you write a song you marry the personal with the fictional and make art,” added Gillespie. “I was thinking about two people living alone, together but apart, existing and suffering in a psychic malaise, who plough on because of responsibilities and commitments. It’s about the impermanence of everything—an existential fact that everyone has to face at some point in their lives.”

“Remember We Were Lovers” 

Silver Synthetic

Loved the debut EP from New Orleans chooglers Silver Synthetic which came out last year and with “In The Beginning,” the band announces their first LP for Third Man coming on April 9th. The song follows the debut’s sunbaked country saunter — a gulf stream gust of Cosmic Americana that’s steeped in twang with just a hint of West Coast vibe and running through it. While its not easy to shake the salt air out of the song, at its core there’s a heat struck, back porch sound to ease “In The Beginning” that feels soaked in humid Southern summer nights with nothing on the docket the next day. Despite its title, the cut’s a bit of an end of party tune, winding down with the last couple of stalwarts still taking in that star-borne vista and feeling set for the moment. The band’s eponymous debut sets them up nicely to slot in among the current cosmic revival, clipping a couple of stunners from the EP and setting them up with a whole bunch of new favourites as well. 

New Orleans’ Silver Synthetic were formed by members of other, more raucous, garage punk groups who wanted a musical outlet where they could, you know, chill. Their debut album is a real cool time indeed, drawing on a wide variety of ’60s/’70s psychedelic guitar pop (The Kinks, Big Star, Television) with undeniable hooks, heavenly harmonies and stellar musicianship. If you are also down with a little noodling, “Silver Synthetic” provides a pasta factory’s worth, all deliciously al dente and made with purpose. The jamming never gets in the way of the songs, though, and there’s not a mediocre one on this fantastic record.

The magisterial “Chasm Killer” is a baroque gem with the album’s best guitar solo.

In the Beginning · Silver Synthetic ·  Third Man Records Released on: 2021-02-17

Vault 47 Jack White Live At the Masonic Temple

Jack White will release his July 30th, 2014 concert at Detroit’s Masonic Temple on vinyl via Third Man Records, the singer-songwriter announced on Monday. The release will mark the 47th Vault package from his record label and will be available to those who subscribe by January 31st. A preview of the album is available now with a live cut of “Missing Pieces”.

The 38-track concert clocks in at nearly three-and-a-half hours. Over the course of the evening, White ran through memorable White Stripes tracks like the opening “Fell in Love With a Girl” as well as “The Big Three Killed My Baby”, “Icky Thump”, “We’re Going To Be Friends”, and more. The show also finds White offering up covers of Beck‘s “Devil’s Haircut”, Led Zeppelin‘s “The Lemon Song”, and Hank Williams‘ “Ramblin’ Man”.

The four, 180-gram LPs come in White’s signature solo colours of blue, black, and white. Together they are housed in a slipcase cover with photo inner sleeves, featuring pictures from the show shot by David Swanson. Along with Live at Masonic Temple, subscribers will also receive a 7′ vinyl of White’s appearance on Saturday Night Live on October 10th where he performed a medley comprised of “Ball and Biscuit”, “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, and “Jesus Is Coming Soon” as well as paid tribute to Eddie Van Halen with his performance of “Lazaretto” using a guitar modeled after Eddie’s.

Ahead of the Vault package’s release, White has also shared live audio of “Missing Pieces” from the concert, available below. 

“Live at Masonic Temple” and subscribe to Third Man Records‘ Vault series by January 31st to receive the vinyl.

The White Stripes Greatest Hits

In 1997 a brother and sister climbed into the third floor attic of their Southwest Detroit family homestead and bashed out a primitive cover of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream.” In an alternate reality, it’s all they ever do musically. The brother leads a spartan life as a dutiful upholsterer and the sister finishes culinary school and continues to make heart warming food.

But that doesn’t happen. Something sparks in both of them. They take their simple guitar-drums-voice approach to a local open mic night on Bastille Day. The performance was just good enough to keep them going. In what feels like a whirlwind, they record and release two 7-inch singles for a local indie label. A not-so-local indie offers to put out a full length album.

They start touring. Another album. More touring. Another album. Folks Really start to pay attention. Crazy touring schdeule’s. More albums, accolades, wildest dream after wildest dream coming true. “World-renowned” becomes an appropriate descriptor as does “long-building overnight sensation.”

The fact that people even care about the Vault at all is almost entirely predicated on the hard work and dedication that the White Stripes exhibited from the very onset of their existence. So it is with extreme reverence that we pour that same dedication into The White Stripes Greatest Hits.

We get that the idea of “Greatest Hits” may seem irrelevant in the era of Spotify and playlisting…that an act’s most streamed songs are considered their de facto “hits.” But we also wholeheartedly believe that great bands deserve “Greatest Hits” and that a large part of our successes has been built on zigging when the rest of the “music business” is zagging. The White Stripes are a great band with great fans and it feels like a greatest hits compilation from them is not only appropriate, but absolutely necessary.

With a track list traversing the entirety of their career, from late Nineties flashes of brilliance through early 2000s underground anthems, masterful MTV moon man moments, Grammy-grabbing greatness, worldwide stadium chants…the songs here are as wide-ranging as you can imagine. Two LP’s worth of those tracks are precision pressed on glorious red and white discs at Third Man Pressing in Detroit.

The White Stripes Greatest Hits detonation vinyl

But for our most dedicated supporters, the legion, the ride-or-die Vault members…well, you deserve a bit more

We expanded the collection by adding a bonus LP of largely overlooked, previously scattered b-sides. That disc is pressed on an exquisite red/white/black “detonation” coloured vinyl. Of particular interest is the first-ever official vinyl appearance of the Stripes’ stellar cover of the Tegan and Sara track “Walking With a Ghost” coupled with the first vinyl issue of some tracks in over 15 years.

To climb further down the rabbit hole, the Vault version of Greatest Hits features iconic artwork from longtime White Stripes collaborator Rob Jones. Fully displaying why he’s a Grammy Award-winning designer, the Jones artwork is whimsical and engrossing and chock full of Easter eggs that will only slowly avail themselves to the most scrutinous of eyes over the long arduous passage of time.

In addition to the exclusive album art, the Vault package comes with a shockingly breath-taking custom set of three Rob Jones 8×10 silk-screen prints. There are three different sets of prints and they will be inserted into your package at random. Frameable, gallery-worthy, dare we say investible…nothing short of the brilliance that’s become par for the course from Mr. Jones.

As the final little treat for this our 46th Vault package, we’ve got a White Stripes-themed set of magnetic poetry. Yes, all the words you best know from Jack White’s lyrics…home, bone and telephone and SO many more, included here for you to randomize and make your own “little” White Stripes song. While the standard issue black vinyl version of The White Stripes Greatest Hits will be available for eternity, the Vault version will be the ONLY coloured-vinyl or artwork variation. Sign up for the Vault by midnight Central Standard Time October 31st to lock in what is truly a stunning collection celebrating the best recorded moments of the White Stripes.

 

May be an image of 5 people and text

We have a live single coming out on Third Man Records on October 30th, Last year on Halloween, we played TMR in Nashville and our set was recorded straight to vinyl. you can now hear it for yourself & feel like You were there. (Side A- Lizzy / Side B- Bet my Brains)⁣ features two tracks from “Devour You”. Our first ever live recording. on a cold, cold night last Halloween, Los Angeles’s Angel baby rocker phenoms Starcrawler blasted off in the Blue Room at Third Man Nashville, igniting the stage and pumping the lifeblood back into the room. Formed in 2015 not yet out of high school, the group has released two full-length albums, both to critical acclaim, and toured extensively across the globe. Starcrawler dressed the part for this special night in the Blue Room, fully and appropriately costumed up for maximum spookiness. this live 7” single captures the group ripping through two songs from their most recent album “Devour You”.

First is their vicious, nearly double-time version of “Lizzy,” tumbling through swells of mic feedback, fills and riffy distortion as vocalist Arrow De Wilde shouts into the ruckus. on the flipside, “Bet My Brains” (whose 7” label prominently features a rare appearance from one of the more sheepish members of the band) is head-banging, chugging R’n’R fun incarnate. A must listen!, We are also extremely excited to say that we’re playing a special livestream show October 30th at @theroxy,

Live at Goose Lake: August 8th 1970 (Standard Black Vinyl)

The Stooges are releasing a previously-unheard, “high-quality soundboard recording” of their original lineup’s final performance, which was recorded on August 8th, 1970, shortly before the release of their classic sophomore album Fun House, which they performed in full at this show. The new live album is called The Stooges’ Live At Goose Lake: August 8, 1970, and it comes out almost exactly 50 years after the show was performed, August 7th via Third Man Records.

The audio was “lovingly restored” by Vance Powell (The White Stripes, Chris Stapleton) and mastered by Bill Skibbe at Third Man Mastering, and the liner notes were written by Jaan Uhelzski (Creem Magazine). There’s a Rough Trade limited-edition colored vinyl variant with purple-colored vinyl and a standard LP jacket, and an indie exclusive version on cream-colored vinyl with a purple-colored vinyl and a standard LP jacket, and an indie exclusive version on cream-colored vinyl with a screen-printed LP jacket.

A press release reads:

The apocryphal tale of the Stooges performance at the Goose Lake Festival has been told countless times over the past five decades. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence or whatever you choose to fill in the blank, absolutely spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note on stage. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of the Stooges.

But what if that simply… wasn’t the case? What if you could prove otherwise? Well, it’d be the
proto-punk equivalent of having an immediate, on-the-scene, man on the street report of all those folkies booing Dylan’s electric set at Newport in ‘65. Irrefutable evidence of what ACTUALLY went down. Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse amongst other tasty analog artifacts of the same era, the 1/4” stereo two-track tape of the Stooges complete performance at Goose Lake on August 8th, 1970 is the Rosetta Stone for fans of this seminal band.

Not only is this the last ever performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the ONLY known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory.

Would you believe that… Alexander actually DID play bass on this occasion? Or that, despite grievous failures on some songs, Alexander is damn solid on others? Especially on the bass-led songs “Dirt” and “Fun House”? Does Iggy provoke the crowd to tear down festival barriers? Did the powers that be pull the plug on the Stooges? So many questions are answered only to have more arise.

Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the performance, Live at Goose Lake: August 8th 1970, is the rare release that literally rewrites the history of these Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

“T.V. Eye (Radio Edit)” (Live) 2020 Third Man Records,  Released on: 2020-06-10

 

Image may contain: 1 person

Brendan Benson is one of American’s best songwriters. Sure, he might not be the best-selling, but in terms of sheer melodies crafted, lyrics excelled, and wonderful songs released he’s up there with the greatest. Back in April, Brendan Benson unveiled his latest set of tracks away from The Raconteurs, with whom he serves as co-songwriter along with Jack White. Benson discussus his first solo LP in seven years, as well as the emerging live streaming industry in the wake of the then-novel coronavirus.

His last single ‘Half A Boy (And Half A Man)’ manages to shuffle reflective masculinity into a three minute country-tinged power pop song and make it work. Immaculately conceived, ‘Half A Boy…‘ is driven by acoustic guitar chords and crunching lead overdubs, but at heart its a gentle beast.

A tale of split personalities, Shot from Brendan Benson’s home studio in Nashville, TN.

Made this with my friend Brad from The Whirlwind Heat. Back in the day, I engineered their album “Do Rabbits Wonder”. Little known fact.  Dear Life is out now on Third Man Records.

No photo description available.

On June 15th, 2000, The White Stripes performed at Jay’s Upstairs in Missoula, MT, just five days before the release of De Stijl, the band’s second album. Today, June 20th, 2020, “De Stijl” celebrates its 20th birthday, and though The White Stripes are no longer together, the band has released footage of “Death Letter” from that Jay’s Upstairs concert, which will also appear in the Third Man Records Vault Package #44.

The 2000 Son House cover came before frontman Jack White would add a Big Muff to his pedalboard, and well ahead of its emergence as a fan-favorite live track, way back in the days of $1.25 pints of Pabst and Hi8 camcorders. This rendition of “Death Letter” featured Jack’s high-pitched vocals, percussive guitar picking, and Meg White‘s steady drumming, typical of the band’s minimalist garage rock and blues sound at the time. While not as extensive as later versions, which usually include an improvised intro and some segues, Jack took the solo to familiar places thanks to his trusty DigiTech Whammy pedal and high-gain tone.

Though the band had only been together for a couple of years at this point, Jack and Meg’s chemistry is palpable. A simple glance or an audible “Hey!” from Jack signals the changes, which sees Meg follow in lockstep. The crowd seems entranced throughout the grainy video too, and while there are not many people at the tiny venue, it certainly foreshadows the arenas that followed in later years.

In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of De Stijl, watch The White Stripes (Jack White & Meg White) perform “Death Letter” live at Jay’s Upstairs in Missoula, MT from June 15th, 2000! This performance took place during the peak of De Stijl touring, and was taken directly from the original tapes deep within the Third Man Records archives for the 20th anniversary of De Stijl Third Man Vault Package.

De Stijl, dutch for “the style”, is the second album released by The White Stripes on June 20th, 2000. Head to the Third Man Records website for more information on future vault releases.