White Blood Cells is sixteen quick tracks partly driven by overbearing simplistic beats overlayed with warm heavily distorted guitar and a classic brit pop style howl. On the other hand, a good portion of White Blood Cells is dominated by clean guitar and conservative vocals. The White Stripes have a good handle on musical balance and dynamics, although with a bit more clang than my ears prefer to take. The White Stripes really bash it out, and when I say bash, I mean crash, as in crash symbol. If you're not a big fan of bass hit on every up beat, crash on every down beat, then you probably won't find yourself listening to this album too often. The guitar tone is rather searing at times as well. I remember an interview with Stephen Malkmus on NATN where he was talking about how bad Mike McCready's guitar tone is. If he can't stand McCready's guitar tone, I don't see how he could survive a whole tour with the Stripes. I guess it's just what you're used to. I think my issue with the sound is partly instrumentation and partly production. They could've taken the edge off a little.

The songs themselves are quite good on White Blood Cells. Although, I tend to view albums as single a work, and in that view White Blood Cells seems like just a collection of random songs. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not above par in my realm of musical taste.
This is my second attempt at reviewing White Blood Cells (the first was quite a disaster), and it seems to make sense now that "We're Going to be Friends" is my favorite track on the album. It lacks that bang and blame percussion section...just Jack on guitar is a little easier for me to digest. I have a few other likes on the album too. I dig the quick and bouncy "Hotel Yorba" just for its simplicity and its cute little lyric. "Now Mary" is another good tune that I find pretty listenable and has a nice catchy melody.

The lyrics are pretty well written pieces of poetic imagery, but they rarely have any significant point or message. Maybe I'm just too lazy to look deeper. The lyrics are relatively entertaining and are quite witty at times. "Think of what the past did, it could've lasted, so you put it in your basket, I hope you know a strong man, who can lend you a hand, lowering my casket"...cute anyway, almost emo cute.

I don't listen to this album often at all. It's not half bad, it's just not my thing. I prefer blue jeans and a black t-shirt over white stripes...if you know what I mean. The fact that this album doesn't easily fit in with any of the current radio fads (at least in my part of the country) is definitely a plus. When I'm at work listening to the radio, I'll take "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" any day over the latest Rob Zombie made for MTV garbage.

I've never really figured out what indie music (sound) is, but if I had to guess, I would guess it was the White Stripes.