Hell yeah, hot freaks. Jack and Meg White's first two raucous platters are coming back at you in the biggest redistribution by a major label of still-available albums by fake-sibling bands beginning with the letter W since Elektra fancified Gene and Dean Ween's early catalog! For you efficient readers resistant to some patented Pitchfork scaffolding because you spent the night deciding which Gargamel quote to use in your chat profile, here's the quick review: once upon a time, the White Stripes were the half-mortal, half-Godzilla missionaries sent to lead rock to its promised land, and their rekkerds measured up to the hype. These albums contained thunderous, honky-soulful, lacerating pop at various stages of evolution. De Stijl is better, but only by noses. The end! Anyone still Stripe-hungry, read on:

You probably weren't given the choice of not admiring this fine pair. Their charm is so bullying that their fans have become like hog-tied soldiers in the days of impressment, and their sudden crossover ubiquity threatens to vault them into a saturation-backlash a la the Spice Girls. This week's highlights:

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA: An undergrad Design major turns in her final project-- a giant, circular red-and-white UPC symbol, inspired by the White Stripes' peppermint motif.

SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA: Two nervy fellas with hopes of being Jerry Bruckheimer's production assistants become the it-boys of their apartment building's pool when they pump White Blood Cells; their Aiwa boombox's shuffle feature begins fortuitously with "Fell In Love with a Girl."

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA: A group of conscientious dropouts walking home from a coffeehouse drumming circle are hooted at by some ballcapping Thads in a Pathfinder. One of the dropouts yells a retort. The Thads park, exit, and dry-gulch one of the group's males, who will require stitches. Blasting from the Pathfinder the whole time: the Stripes' "Expecting."

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO: Taking his cue from a canny jukebox selection of the treacly "We're Going to Be Friends," a well-meaning mouth-breather out on the town seduces a tat-dappled Zippo-grrl with his knowledge of the White Stripes. When he goes to pee and service his coifed mane, he hears the kitchen staff jamming on "I Think I Smell a Rat."

MTV: Yep.

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA: After the forced closure of her aquarium store, a girl gets high and goes to a 24-hour Wal-Mart with a permanent marker. Her plans to vandalize the pet department are thwarted by a potty-mouthed fifteen-year-old who runs a shopping cart over her left foot, dismantling her flip-flop and her pinky toe. The cart's sole contents: a copy of Is This It and a notepad listing the Strokes and the White Stripes, with the Strokes crossed out.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Packed venue Black Cat becomes a hub of debate when a guy, sporting a stocking cap despite the broil, claims that every incarnation of the garage-blues revival is better than the Stripes. A straight-edge female eventually punctures his facade by tricking him into praising a nonexistent Detroit Cobras album.

SOY-BASED AIRWAVES: National Public Radio does a feature bit on the White Stripes. The band's shtick gets more airtime than their music. Fans are reportedly color-coordinating their outfits at Stripes shows, further shearing the curtain between indie rockers and Delta Chi Omegas at homecoming. 'Brother' Jack righteously plugs the blues, and 'sister' Meg joins him in a shout-out to Mom.

EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN: General Mills test-markets White Stripes cereal. Participants report a rise in general sexiness; the swagger index quadruples. People greet each other with cool, quick nods, slightly puckering their lips. Mail carriers make devil-horn hand-gestures to suggest that tailgaters pass.

See, Ryan Pitchfork makes us wear these teal beepers 24-7, even if we're going to a waterslide park. I was working at Cinnabon at the mall last week, and he beeped me, and I called him back and he said he wanted to hear me eating a Cinnabun while I talked to him. I reminded him I'm hypoglycemic; he reminded me that he was the boss. He promised me free Barfsurfer and Hymenella promos. I ate for him, and then he said, "Let's review the old Stripes records that Sympathy never sent us." And I said, "What's the point? Nothing new can be said about the Stripes." And he said, "Just compare and contrast, like in high school. Reinforce their greatness. And leave yourself out of the review this time; you're like an aborted fetus trying to win your parents' love. Richard-San doesn't pull that needy shit." Then he asked if there was a Gingiss Formalwear at my mall, because he wanted to hear sequins crumpling next time we talked. "Get gussied up," he said, and I said, "Ai'ight," and he said, "Audi 5000." Cinnabon fired me, but I was tight with this skeezer at Successories, so we just switched aprons.

I'm delaying actually confronting these records because they don't conjure a hunched-before-a-besotted-Compaq vibe. This band's rock is so imposing that you want to be in some kind of motion to describe it. You shouldn't wuss around it, or intellectualize to it. You'll headbang involuntarily. You've got to hear the Stripes' albums; if I explain them to you, you'll picture a novelty band that peaks on a public access talent show. But Jack White's in that league with Isaac Brock; some weird, earnest quantity about their best work (realness, maybe?) deflates irony-dependent artholes, pointing out how lodestone-free our hands and pockets remain. You don't want to be the lame-ass clicking a Microsoft mouse in the presence of this adrenal crunch.

Witnessing White Blood Cells and then De Stijl and then the self-titled debut is similar to watching the undeveloping photograph that begins the film Memento's retrograde arc. The listener can hear how the band leapfrogged to greatness with each release.

The first adjustment that De Stijl requires is that you get used to the guitar not taking up as much awesome space as it does on White Blood Cells. And in places, the first-day-with-the-new-rhythm drums are "Hotel Yorba" sloppy, infinitesimally behind. And Jack sounds nasal every now and then. That said, these strong songs hold their own against Cells, as Jack scrapes the strings here and lets them shriek there-- and when she's on, Meg's channeling of Little Red Riding Bonham leaves potholes. People pounce on the Stripes' Zep-a-billy, but damn, you've got to respect a band that, while covering Son House's "Death Letter," compresses all the atmosphere of stadium dinosaurs into a streetcorner act. No mere duo's made this much noise since Eric B and Rakim.

The acoustic sweep of "I'm Bound to Pack It Up" manages to homage the Who, Floyd, the Kinks and Zep, not to mention its lofty adherence to the rambler-wanderer tradition. The crisp "Apple Blossom" could be a Revolver outtake. The Stripes' blues obsession is more evident here than on Cells; in addition to the dedication to Blind Willie McTell, songs 7-9 feature some mellow, mellow slide leads, and "Hello Operator" rips into a harp solo. These gestures are performed with the same heedful regard as the Stones' similar nods-- a hymnic tone prevents them from oozing into blues-aping caricatures, or the diluted Caucasian appropriations that clog rock history. The wailing vox of "Let's Build a Home" suggest AC/DC's Bon Scott, another blues-influenced metal god whose act was great when it stuck to making brassy rock about the hollowing universals of fumbled desire and spiritual homelessness. You can barely buy the heartbreak because it's delivered so cockily.

I've alluded to a lot of old-school bands (whoops-- left out Sabbath), but I contend that De Stijl is progressively derivative, as opposed to, say, the Mooney Suzuki, who should be paying royalties to a handful of bands, some as recent as Mudhoney. The Stripes' oddly conventional subjects (domesticity, marriage, optimism) distinguish them, and they have heartiness of style to spare. The disc's packaging juxtaposes the band's Willy Wonka fetish with museum pomp; the liner notes contain a manifesto on simplicity, and God comes first on a list of "those who helped in the making of this record." Opener "You're Pretty Good Looking" best combines the band's skills, and hints at Cells' heavy gleam. This song flexes serious pop muscle, and contains the non-sequitur and surrealist touches that give Cells its mystic, mythic penumbra (backs are broken, thoughts are stolen, the year 2525 looms). Only Cells' guitar ballast keeps the legitimately exciting De Stijl in check; the skeleton of the Stripes' breakthrough was clearly already intact.

The debut is, predictably, an altogether more raw affair, with not enough variations on the theme. Meg's balancing presence is the only thing saving the album from induction in the saloon-door-violating big-dick guitarchives. The album's Detroitness is transparent, and its blues aren't nearly as reconciled with its punk. Some of the staccato riffs seem to have speech impediments. No Beatles ghost triggers the Ouija board. A slightly distorted Jack yelps and squeals and sounds tinny by about the twelfth cut, a far cry from the visceral prophecy and pronunciamento of Cells "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground."

The record is saucy, but ultimately not as arresting as the others, even though the arrangements are just as winningly unadorned. Well, except for the tunes where Meg's approaching army tank-tread drums are reverbed, as if the band is masking their spare sound the way straight-to-video horror movies attempt to camouflage their low production values. "Sucker Drips" is uncharacteristically thin, and the sassy plod of "Astro" dates back to the, uh, (cough) Cramps. The cover of Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee" displays excellent taste and replaces the original's violins (and Emmylou Harris) with some dope organ, but the tempo-- and Jack's half-tribute sinus inflection-- bring the party down.

Colossal offerings abound, though: the three chords that constitute "Little People" embody the sound of rock insisting on its own supremacy. The ode to alienation "When I Hear My Name" is rife with blistering "mmmms" and "whoah-ohh-ohh-ohhs." A different Blind Willie, this one a Johnson, gets an uncredited updating on "Cannon," a rousing rendition of the apocalyptic "John the Revelator." Robert Plant's quivering androgyny gets a thorough reworking on the bratty, double-timing "Screwdriver." Every Brit band who's ever blown an amp before you were born gets amalgamized on "Jimmy the Exploder." And ass is simply kicked by the falsetto twists and Pepsi-bottle percussion breakdowns of "Broken Bricks."

The debut rocks in turbo-increments, but its statement is fussy and loping. A standoffish, reclusive element (manifesting itself in Jack's scream of "don't wanna be social") is more disagreeable and difficult than the entirety of the other, more accommodating records to follow. The puerile veneer that has driven some to judge the Stripes as stunted in their tweens is yet to emerge, although many fans in their thirties have voiced gratitude for a band that can be counted on to help them forget that they have kids to beat and dishes to break.

This scrappy band's not dumb and it ain't a fluke-- the Stripes could do their rock 'n' roll homework in their sleep. They linked underground noise to American roots, validating it at long last! Thank fate that the Stripes are finally making the indie rock lobby less effing stuffy, after all those tweedy, post-Tortoise Ph.D'd doops cramped everybody's style! I want somebody to play their guitar like the four horsemen just unplugged all the teleprompters! Who else could pull off the two-person thing? (Not Swearing At Motorists.) The uniform thing? (Not The Make-Up.) The candy? (Not Sammy.)

Feel no shame in climbing aboard the Stripes' double-decker fanwagon. Just act like you're getting one of these albums for a less-hip friend, or purchase something really obscure along with it, like a Vocokesh or When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water album. Hooray for civilization, I didn't talk covetously about Meg's bod! We don't need another hero! Uncross your eyes! There's gravel in the bubblegum! This ain't juvenilia, bitch, it's rawk!

-William Bowers, June 18th, 2002