Great interview at the Onion AV Club with the White Stripes. Y'know, having read a little bit through the AV Club's book of collected interviews, and having read the site regularly for a good 4 years now, I've come to really appreciate their style of interviewing. You can go through, say, Pitchfork's archive and it seems like half the time they piss off their subjects--which is fine--but the Onion seems very good at not antagonizing their subjects and prodding them in useful directions and really letting them speak for themselves, which can be very good. Jack, for instance, gets to explain the whole "death of the sweetheart" notion in much more restrained and expansive terms than he has before. The explanation always used to seem kind of hostile rather than sweet, and it's hard not to think that's the interviewer's fault. So it's nice to see that here, even if he does get into quesitonable "wigga"-hatin' territory.

Anyway, there's a bunch of other good stuff, like Jack helpfully comparing Meg to Ringo (in a positive way! Really!) and finally, for me anyway, explaining the reason why such a "back to basics" band named its second album after a European high-art design movement: Jack ran an upholstery shop. Lots of cool stories in there about that, too.
posted by Mike B. at 6:34 PM 0 comments