White Stripes Icky Thump X Vault 33 Deluxe 4LP Box Set (w/Rag & Bone Pin) MINT

$

120

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Third Man Rexords- The White Stripes Icky Thump X Vault #33 Deluxe Box Set

MINT condition- package opened only to verify contents.

Box Set Includes:

- Deluxe Icky Thump 180-Gram, Double LP, Explosion Colored Vinyl (white w/red splatter and red w/black splatter)

- 12" Icky Thump Extras album pressed in “luminescent lunar-colored” (white) vinyl

- The Red Demos Album (contains 1st ever release of the instrumental "Monkeys Have It Easy")

- Exclusive Polaroid Photo Book "Pictures from Icky" by David James Swanson,

- Red, Black and White Smierc Photo Picture

-RAG AND BONE ENAMEL PIN SET depicting the horse skeleton imagery from the “Rag and Bone” single’s cover art.

***see below for detailed package contents ************

The tenth anniversary vinyl pressing of Icky Thump comes in the form of two discs pressed in stunning “contained explosion” colored vinyl. It’s a stereo mix (not to be confused with the mono version featured in the very first Vault package), remastered from the original 1-inch analog tapes and manufactured at the new Third Man Pressing plant in Detroit. The sound quality is top notch, with the duo’s small-scale Led Zeppelin ethos coming through very well on vinyl. This album was one of the more experimental ones in the White Stripes’ garage-blues-rock catalogue, beginning with the avant-garde title track, and later venturing through a Scottish-style folk ballad with bagpipes (“Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn”) and a Mexican-style mariachi romp with a trumpet (by way of a cover of Patti Page’s “Conquest”). Songs that are more reminiscent of the Stripes’ earlier garage rock (“You Don’t Know What Love Is”, “Little Cream Soda”, “I’m Slowly Turning Into You”) and old-fashioned blues (“300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues”, “Rag And Bone”, “Catch Hell Blues”) are given more technically sophisticated presentation here than on their earlier indie albums. Icky Thump was not intended to be the final White Stripes album, but in retrospect, one might think that the duo quit while they were ahead.

The Red Demos LP, pressed in black vinyl, contains the demos of ten of the album’s songs, recorded in January 2007. (The major-label-released Icky Thump reportedly was the only album that the duo ever demoed before the studio recordings). “Conquest” and “Icky Thump” are really the only tracks that have a work-in-progress feel (and you won’t hear trumpets or bagpipes on either). Four other tracks – “You Don’t Know What Love Is”, “A Martyr For My Love For You”, “Prickly Thorn”, and “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues” – are nearly the equals of their finished versions. “Bone Broke” also takes on a life of its own here, sounding as if it could have been a demo for the Raconteurs. But the instrumental tracks are what make the Red Demos LP special. Listening to “Rag And Bone”, “Catch Hell Blues” (both versions), and the previously unreleased “Monkeys Have It Easy” is like eavesdropping on early Led Zeppelin – or perhaps another ‘60’s British blues rock band – jamming their hearts out in a private garage. The “Little Cream Soda” demo is another dizzyingly intense instrumental, one that I wouldn’t compare to anyone else but the White Stripes. Red hot!

The Icky Thump Extras LP, pressed in “luminescent lunar-colored” (white) vinyl, contains another enjoyable assortment of muddy recordings by the duo from the album's time period, all of which originally appeared as B-sides and digital bonus tracks. The two sides are labeled as Side 2 and Side B. Side 2 is the noisy rock side, with the Stripes’ garage rock ethos on bold display. The first two tracks were bonus tracks on the iTunes version of Icky Thump. The live rendition of Hank Williams’ “Tennessee Border” has a Neil Young and Crazy Horse kind of recklessness; another ‘50’s cover, Bill Carter’s “Baby Brother”, is an equally raucous garage-rockabilly rumpus. The other two tracks were B-sides on the CD-single for “You Don’t Know What Love Is”. The “frat rock” version of that song sounds like exactly that, a loose and informal rendition recorded on a horse-racing track in Canada, dominated by loud and fuzzy organ and guitar. The acoustic version of “A Martyr For My Love For You” has a casual live-in-the-studio type of sound. Side B collects (mostly) lower-volume lo-fi diversions, under-produced by Beck; these tracks originally appeared as B-sides on various “Conquest” singles. These include two humorous satirical songs about fame and privacy (“It’s My Fault For Being Famous”) and social status (“Honey, We Can’t Afford To Look This Cheap”). “Cash Grab Complications On The Matter” is mostly piano-based, but is punctuated by bursts of nasty electric noise. The side ends with two alternate versions of "Conquest": an earthy “acoustic mariachi version” played with traditional mariachi string instruments and trumpet, as well as a full-bodied version sung in Spanish. If the album version of the song sounds perfect for a Tarantino film, these two versions would both be suitable for a film by Robert Rodriguez. You won’t find much coherency or professional sound quality on Icky Thump Extras, just loads of rowdy, unpolished fun.

The accompanying book Pictures From Icky features a series of Polaroids taken during the album’s recording and practice sessions by Whirlwind Heat singer David Swanson, as well as pictures of pages from a yellow legal pad in which Swanson scrawled notes about the recording sessions at Blackbird Studios in Nashville. There is nothing surprising here, but it is mildly amusing to see mistakes Swanson made in his note taking (he spelled the album title “Ecky Thump”), pictures of the lab coat Swanson wore in the studio, and references to a song called “Over and Over and Over” that the Whites decided not to record for the album – but Jack eventually recorded it for his 2018 solo album Boarding House Reach.

The other bonus item in the package is an enamel pin set depicting the horse skeleton imagery from the “Rag and Bone” single’s cover art. The entire set is packaged in a roomy box with a cover image of the cross of St. Andrew. One technical flaw: the center holes in the Icky Thump Extras and Red Demos LP's are cut too small, and they make it difficult to put the discs on the turntable, as well as to remove them.

Besides marking the 10th anniversary of the Icky Thump album release, this package also reminds me of the very first Vault package from eight years ago, which also was Icky Thump-related. Back in 2009, the Vault certainly seemed like a bold experiment in the early days of the vinyl resurgence. As I recall, the original Third Man Vault FAQ jokingly stated that “the whole thing might blow up in our faces”. Well, it certainly didn’t. It’s quite remarkable how well the Third Man Vault has progressed, and it’s still a thrill to be a part of its membership, as if it’s still a revolutionary new thing. Here’s hoping for many more years of exciting quarterly Vault packages.

A note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or the runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is present on these items. The Icky Thump stereo double LP has “Clicky Bump”, “Monkeys Have It Easy”, “Catch Ya Later”, and “Faygo Crème Soda” carved in its respective sides. The Icky Thump Extras LP has “You want four piece or five piece?” carved in Side B, and “writing credit restored” carved in Side 2. The Red Demos LP has “hold out for possible thermonuclear counter-thrust” carved in Side X, and “Over and Over Ray Bans” carved in Side XX.