The White Stripes is one of those garage blues rock bands from the last revival wave in the end of the 90’s and the beginning of the new century who managed to transform the sound of the underground in order to make it more accessible to the masses. This, however, is not just a try to reach more commercial success. While thousands of bands are willing to remain authentic and true to their garages, which is also relative, The White Stripes are using their talent in the best possible way not to fall in the typical cliche for the genre. And in fact they seem to be doing their job really well, because with “Icky Thump” they reached high positions in the charts, and the readers of Rolling Stone Magazine pointed them as number one live band lately. In the time between “Get Behind Me Satan” and the current release, Jack White managed to mess with another band, The Racounters. Similar to the Stripes, they release conquering-the-world radio hits. One more thing Jack managed to mess with is a marriage. In fact his wife, who's coming from Lancashire, England, is to blame for the title of the album - “Icky Thump” is an exclamation from the northern parts of the UK, meaning "What the heck?!" But they made a slight change (just like Led Zeppelin in their name) to be more accessible for the American audience. Except for Zeppelin and the Stones, other influences the Stripes got in “Icky Thump” are some mariachi techniques, which ended up perfectly with the concept of self-titled song - immigration. The same is to be heard in “Conquest”, which is a cover version of a Corky Robins song, popularized by Patti Page in the 50’s. There is a major change in the songs’ construction - the piano from “Get Behind Me Satan” is missing, which puts “Icky Thump” next to the earlier stuff of the band. And although they are just two, they make a lot of noise and have this electric and dramatic sexy charge that gets you right in the next bar and everything you could do is just have a good time.