I hate the White Stripes.

From the brother-or-wife shtick to the costumes to the lack of originality disguised as retro-philia, the White Stripes are a hell of a lot closer to a manufactured boy band than their fans would ever admit. Nine parts posing and marketing for every one part of musical ability, this is truly a band fully aware of the fact that it could shit on a pile of magnetic tape and the critics would applaud the resulting product.

When they recorded Elephant (2002) on analog equipment, they ran to every music magazine on Earth bragging about it. Wow, how retro. How hardcore. How "low-fi". But all their phony cred cannot hide the fact that this band simply isn't good or interesting. Get Behind Me proves that and then some.

First of all, Meg White is the worst fucking drummer in the history of music. You'd think that after a decade in a platinum-selling, actively-touring band she'd be picking some things up. Unfortunately her musical growth rate cannot be measured by conventional instruments. Listen to "Doorbell" and try to keep track of the missed beats and random tempo fluctuations. It's fun. While their clone-like fans consider this to be part of their oh-so-real retro spontaneous charm, it is really just shoddy musicianship.

"Instinct Blues" is the culmination of the great Lou Barlow prophecy of a new generation of phony white boy electric blues. Yes, Jack, you sure are convincing, what with your appropriately moan-like vocals and slow hand guitar. "Orchid" and "Doorbell" seem like an untimely effort to cash in on the long-dead electroclash/rock-as-dance-music trend. Even if it were not two years too late, these cuts would still suck.

In short, there is nothing wrong with this band that couldn't be solved by a plane crash. If you believe this band is the best thing "rock music" has going for it today - and I know many of you do - I simply feel sorry for you. I feel partly responsible for this band's existence. I taunted God and claimed that no band could ever be more annoying and have a more pretentious, trend-hopping group of fans than Wilco. I have been proven wrong many times over.

Ed