White Stripes at Mercury Lounge

I was tempted to start off this review with something big and blowsy like Jack White is the best performer since Elvis. But is that strictly true? Even if I were to insist on it, how can I possibly compare, say, a low-resolution Viva Las Vegas with a live Jack White 10 feet away from me? I can't talk chords or tracks or songs, though, so I've got no choice but to be categorical, because Jack White is so damn good.

First of all, there's his voice. It's all Robert Plant in the high notes and bluesy the rest of the time. Mainly, though, Jack White is a performer. Not quite all there yet?he still doesn't know where to look, and his stage banter consists of turning to his sister Meg to ask her how she's feeling. But give it some time: he's only recently multi-state. In the meantime, the crowd seems perfectly fine with his local-boy patois. Everyone's just happy to see a live show that's better live than it is on CD. This is not a show where some small person sits tweaking his electronic kit.

The White Stripes are playing to a packed crowd at the Mercury Lounge the day after their sold-out shows at the Bowery Ballroom. The two of them, Jack and Meg, are getting big, big enough to have a backlash and an illustration in a recent New Yorker. PJ Harvey is here, as she was the night before at the Bowery after opening for U2 at Madison Square Garden. I'm drinking beers with two friends from college, two native Detroiters, and people start coming in whom they know from the expat Detroit scene. Karyn grabs some guy by the shoulder, he of the shaggy hair and ropy forearm, and asks him if he's in the Go. "Nah," he says, "we all just look alike." Later he's singing with his band Von Bondies, which opens up for the Stripes. They're all really energetic, he's very Jim Morrison-sounding and quite wonderful. Then Jack and Meg come on?Jack was downstairs, taking a nap?and they get going.

One of the first songs is a ballad to a woman named Jolene, and it goes: "Jolene, Jolene, Jo-leen, Jo-leen." Then he starts up with, "You're pretty good-looking," sings that one lyric, then abruptly stops and starts a new song. Everyone gets the joke, which is: we're not doing our crowd-pleaser, so fuck you and don't ask. He's singing about girls. There's something vaguely obscene about this because he's sexual in front of his sister?it's like Meg's walked in on him having sex. One song ends with "...These Detroit women won't let Mr. Jack White rest." The third-person bravura almost doesn't work. It goes just so far so that you almost don't like it, and then you like him more for it. When you find a performer who can push that feeling out of a crowd, it's amazing.

If Jack White can lose his detached, ironic blasé thing (which is quickly becoming a cultural artifact anyway) and focus on how much he enjoys being up there?if he can handle being famous and/or a sex symbol?he's going to be incredible. Because he's got that thing. Some people just have it. They have it in life. They're charming motherfuckers. And as they're talking to you, you're thinking, this is one charming motherfucker. You try not to fall for it but you can't help yourself. What makes Jack as good as he is, I think, is that he doesn't have it in real life, offstage. Because I stood next to him during the opening act and he was just shy and casual, bobbing his head to the music. So the transformation from that to Elvis?to Sex?with his downcast eyes and dollop of hair and wobbly hips?that was remarkable to watch. You see Jack White up there and you just feel such an intense want. It's sort of like sexual want, but it's different, more diffuse, from your toes up and your ribs down and across the back of your neck, and then you can't take it anymore and you want to rip your skin off.