The White Stripes: Live at Le Zénith, Paris

admin on Jun 13th 2007

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7nox8vCD4]

After being herded through the turnstiles and security checks, I stake out a place for myself in the mostly seated but still well-arranged Zenith. With a full family seated behind me and grey-haired couples in every other direction, I have to remind myself that it’s the White Stripes I’m here to see and not Disney on Ice. From having my camera confiscated (a first) to squeezing my way past the lengthy queues for arcade games and merchandise stands, the sheer extent of the event’s organisation really hammers home how big a commodity this band have become. Playing to this kind of audience, on this big a platform, the expectations can be enormous. Thankfully, The White Stripes appaer to know exactly what it takes to put on a show worthy of ticket price amnesia.

Projected across an immense blood-red background, the silhouettes of the duo interplay, stretching, distorting, and towering above the action. In an effective cross-cutting, a zig-zag of light pairs the figures side by side, despite standing on different sides of the stage. Meg bounces up and down ecstatically, as if she were twirling pom-poms instead of drumsticks. Meanwhile Jack – with a partially obscuring veil of hair flapping back and forth as he hops, skips, and side-steps his way across the floor – lets his giant of a shadow loom forebodingly, drifting past in quick bursts only to look like a sequence from some animated horror movie.

To watch the two of them doing is to marvel on how they’ve managed to progress from the sweat-filled claustrophobia of tiny clubs to the echelons of sell-out stadium tour success. When Jack marches over to Meg and jams away enthusiastically in front of her drum kit, you can see that a certain bedroom rehearsal dynamic is still there and that they could just as easily be thrashing about down in a basement somewhere.

The set-list feels carefully planned, maximising attention spans by expertly avoiding dips and peaks while featuring a run of songs that would make it difficult for even the hardest-to-please of those present to feel aggrieved. The likes of ‘Hotel Yorba’, ‘Hello Operator’, ‘Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground’ and Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ are generously interspersed with a select few numbers from Icky Thump’s stronger material, perhaps understandable given that it’s still a week away from being released. Though ‘Catch Hell Blues’, ‘Slowly Turning Into You’, and the title track utilise slide-guitar, organ, and Wurlitzer respectively, all prove that the aptly titled new album sees a return to the riff-rocking ways of old.

Though the sound occasionally muddies with the resonance of gut-rumbling low-end, by its very nature a White Stripes gig is always going to get a little gritty. Jack’s solos squawk and squeal almost as much as his toyful plundering of the Wurlitzer, his vocals sounding like he’s motor-mouthing his way through Chinese tongue-twisters while on amphetamine. Yet in the show’s quieter, acoustic moments – or when Meg gives the ever-present thud of the bassdrum a break to sing ‘Cold, Cold Night’ – the music transmits itself with a clarity far removed from the washout of decibels normally associated with venues of this size.

Departing after a set of exactly one hour, the Stripes let the steady wave of applause hang for a good five minutes before bowing back on to rumble through a medley that begins with ‘Black Math’ and crashes into ‘Seven Nation Army’. When they finish once more, the melody line of the final song continues to be sung out by the crowd in unbridled tribute, lasting beyond the raising of the house lights, the mass exodus, and even the spilling of bodies underground to the Metro line. It’s rare for a predominately-seated gig to see so many endorphins released in unison, but The White Stripes delivered, deserving every bit of the wildly emphatic reaction.