  The White Stripes' new album, Icky Thump, hits stores today. The blues-rock duo's tour sweeps across Canada over the next few weeks.
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Today's release of the White Stripes new album, Icky Thump, has been overshadowed in Canada by the Detroit blues-rock duo's decision to play in all of Canada's 10 provinces and territories over the next few weeks.
But make no mistake, Icky Thump is a record worth talking about.
The White Stripes embrace a heavier sound, yes, but there are a few notable detours -- such as the Celtic-tinged songs Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn and St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Air), the latter featuring some spooky spoken words from White Stripes drummer Meg White.
Both songs have bagpipes.
"I started writing (Prickly Thorn) on mandolin, and it became a song about Scotland," Stripes singer-songwriter-guitarist Jack White said down the line from Nashville recently. "I started talking about the thistle, which is the national flower of Scotland, and sort of the emblem of Scotland.
"The best way I could think, of course, to make it sound as Scottish as possible was try to get a bagpiper involved. But the problem was I wrote the song in the key of D, and as probably a lot of bagpipers know, their Highland pipes are in the key of B flat. So that became a challenge: to not only find a piper in that field but to find one with bagpipes in the key of D. We found one, so we got lucky! It was meant to be."
Another new song is a blazing cover of Corky Robbins' Conquest, popularized in the 1950s by Patti Page in which she was accompanied by a Mexican trumpeter.
"I think it was about 10 years ago, I used to listen to that Patti Page album in my upholstery shop, and I always wanted to cover that song," White said. "And this seemed to be the perfect time to do it because there were motifs sort of popping up on the album of who's using who, and role reversal, and I think Conquest sort of says that in spades.
"So we (found) a Mariachi trumpet player to play on the record. And we found a guy in a Mexican restaurant, and he didn't speak any English so we had a interpreter come in and we communicated with the language of music, I suppose. It worked out well."
The extremely trippy I'm Slowly Turning Into You was a song inspired by a Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) treatment for a video.
"I think it may be the first time a song was written on a video treatment," White said. "(Gondry) was saying, 'This could be one of the best videos ever made, but it has to be done with The White Stripes because it needs a two-piece band. And I want to start with Jack walking and then we'll hire 100 actors, each of whom look less and less like (him) and more like Meg, and we'll have you all walking for a few seconds and then morph between one actor to the next until we get to Meg. And I said, 'Oh, that's a great idea,' and I went home and couple of days later I wrote I'm Slowly Turning Into You."
