The White Stripes: Elephant (2LP, 20th anniversary, smoke coloured vinyl) [THIRD MAN/LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This limited 20th anniversary edition comes on smoke coloured vinyl in a tip-on gatefold jacket with printed inserts. Elephant topped the UK chart, sold over four million copies and won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Smoke coloured vinyl
• 20th anniversary edition
• Limited edition
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Printed inserts
• Stereo mix

About the album

Jack White has always liked a rule or two, and for Elephant the rule was vintage gear, tape and no computers. Jack and Meg White made most of it in about two weeks at Liam Watson's Toe Rag Studios in London, on vintage gear, in the spring of 2002, and the back-to-basics approach of White Blood Cells got even leaner and louder.

"Seven Nation Army" opens with that riff, played on a guitar through an octave pedal so it passes for a bass, and it has since become a stadium chant around the world. "The Hardest Button To Button" stomps, "Black Math" bolts, and the seven-minute "Ball And Biscuit" is a lowdown blues showcase. Their cover of "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" was cut at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios, Meg sings "In The Cold, Cold Night," and "It's True That We Love One Another" closes things with Holly Golightly trading lines.

It's widely seen as a key record of the 2000s garage rock revival and the band's magnum opus. Somewhere, right now, a football crowd is singing the riff without the faintest idea who Meg White is, and she'd probably prefer it that way.

Also at Kops: more The White Stripes on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Third Man / Legacy (cat# TMR200), a reissue of the 2003 album.