It’s like that trick that comedy writers sometimes pull where they repeat a dumb joke ad nauseam until it flips around on itself and becomes funny. It’s an interesting experiment in songwriting, cutting the bullshit out of pop and just getting straight to the hook – all chorus, no verse. It derives meaning from small variations, things like “no matter which way you go, no matter which way you stay” and the inflection of “ out of my mind, out of my mind,” both trying to forget someone and admitting her growing insanity by doing so. “Walking With A Ghost” is the best example of this. As Walking With a Ghost lacks a genuine slam-dunk A-side, most listeners might be best served to just hold off entirely for now, saving attention for the inevitable lavish collection of White Stripes B-sides and rarities that's surely bound to appear sometime within the next couple holiday seasons.Most of Sara’s songs on So Jealous are cyclical, repeating themselves over and over and over again, as if she’s trying to convince herself of something and if she just says it enough, maybe it’ll come true. Live renditions of "As Ugly As I Seem" and "The Denial Twist", both recorded for KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic", remain faithful to the Get Behind Me Satan originals and will likely only appeal to the truly devoted, which could also be said for their barn-burning run-through of their debut album's "Screwdriver". The set's best track is an acoustic version of "Same Boy You've Always Known" recorded in Brazil that actually features a more refined vocal performance than appears on White Blood Cells, provided you're able to ignore the audience's slightly arrhythmic clap-along. Since the duo rarely add much in the way of polish to their studio productions, they are uniquely well-suited to the live recording format, and none of these live tracks differ drastically from their studio counterparts. For Walking With a Ghost, however, they've killed the suspense by padding the maxi-single out with four live versions of previously available album tracks.
Their stormy, Hendrixian cover of the Greenhorns' "Shelter of My Arms", a recent B-side to "The Denial Twist", deserves to be considered alongside the duo's best work, while the "Blue Orchid" flipside "Who's a Big Baby?" might arguably be the most worthless track released this year. The quality of the extras and B-sides accompanying the Get Behind Me Satan singles has run the gamut. The twosome add a brief squiggle of guitar distortion and back-masking between choruses, but for better or worse decline the opportunity to expand this noisy interjection into a full-scale deconstruction. His reedy, double-tracked vocals match Tegan and Sara's phrasing almost exactly, injecting as much spirit as possible into their blank, repetitive non-sequiters like "I was walking with a ghost/ I said please, please don't insist." And Meg, needless to say, sounds well within her comfort zone, managing the song's elementary rhythm with aplomb. Tegan and Sara's original has a slight build even by the White Stripes' rudimentary standards, and Jack's conversion of the guitars from acoustic to electric does little to heft it up. Likewise, those who find Tegan & Sara's skeletal brand of winsome Canadian pop to be unbearably trite and/or mundane will presumably remain unswayed by the White Stripes' modest Detroit upgrade.
In fact, the Stripes' version is almost reverential to fault, making it difficult to imagine a fan of the original disliking this too intensely, unless they simply object to Jack White's complexion or personal habits just on general principle.
Although one can only speculate what exactly prompted Jack and Meg to cover "Walking With a Ghost", they do handle the song with a tangible affection- despite what some Tegan and Sara connoisseurs might believe.
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