About three weeks before Icky Thump’s release, a promo copy of the new White Stripes album ended up at Q101’s station in Chicago. “Giddy and excited” to share the album, Electra, Q101’s early afternoon deejay, broadcast Icky in its entirety. A few hours later, Jack White called the radio station and asked specifically for Electra-so he could tell her she “messed up for the entire (music) business” by leaking the album.It’s hard to imagine why White would be so angry about people hearing Icky Thump, because it’s his best work -Raconteurs included – since Elephant and definitely one of the best American albums of the year.The Stripes’ last album, Get Behind Me Satan, evoked low-key Americana and blues -probably a sign the Stripes were growing tired of the low-fi, stripped-down rock they had perfected. But the Stripes embrace it all with Icky, thus producing a scintillating set of songs that brings both the syncopated hard rock hammer and the bluesy pop feather.Jack and Meg start Icky with the hammer. The title track’s opening synthesizer drone sounds like something the old Nintendo used to pump out. It’s a warning siren: The Stripes are about to unleash hell. That comes in the form of Meg’s thumping drumming and Jack’s knock-you-on-your-ass strumming. From there, the album meanders on its schizophrenic route, delivering poppy gems (“Effect & Cause”) and cymbal-rattling, blues-driven rock (“Bone Broke”). Jack and Meg call Icky’s third track “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues” – a misnomer; the two split the bluesy guitar twang and Jack’s low-key timbre with hard-rock outbursts.Oddly, though, it works. Icky resists any specific genre, something Satan did so well. But the Stripes’ last effort had a few drudging tracks; Icky Thump has none.With the experimental, seamless “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn” and “St. Andrew,” the duo conjures a quasi-Americana revival, complete with a low-toned bagpipe drone, mandolin melodies and someone busking on a fiddle. The drone hums throughout “Prickly Thorn,” spills over into “St. Andrew,” and accelerates into a twisting, experimental rock psychosis.Jack, though, should take some of his own advice – in the form of the last line he sings on Icky Thump: “You can’t take the effect and make it the cause.” When Jack told Electra she was messing up the business by leaking the Stripes’ songs, he must have forgotten that the business was already screwed up; hearing an album like Icky Thump only makes things better.