WHAT to make of The White Stripes?

How exactly did a duo (who may or may not be brother and sister, husband and wife, divorced couple or all of the above), obsessed with reanimating the bloated corpse of 1970s blues rock, end up with a number one album, a co-headline slot at this summer's Leeds Festival and every fashion victim in the London music press proclaiming their latest album the greatest thing since the wheel (or the Strokes album, at least).

But forget the surrounding silliness, the White Stripes have simply made a damn good rock'n'roll record.

The minimalist line-up of guitar-slinging mainman Jack White and his (sister/wife/ whatever) Meg on drums take the electric blues grind of Zeppelin and Hendrix, strip it to basics, and blast it out with the low-budget, high-energy punk rock dynamics of The Stooges or early Nirvana, and in doing so, rescue it from the pubs and the hands of balding blokes in Whitesnake T-shirts.

Rather than being smug ironists or slick musos, they pull it off with spirit and soul, if not a little humour.

Elephant is a likeably spontaneous and patchy record, recorded on dusty vintage equipment, which kicks off in fine-style with Seven Nation Army, and peaks early with the triple-whammy of There's No Home For You Here, the unlikely but excellent take on Bacharach and David's I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself and Meg's Fever-esque vocal spot on In The Cold Cold Night.

The second half trails off, despite the Whites pulling out all the stops to vary their limited sound.

Therein lies the problem - Jack and Meg's unique noise has won them deserved cult success, and they must be excellent to watch in a dingy club; but where do they go from here? The music industry may be in a frenzy over them, but stadium rockers they are not.

But for now at least, before the backlash, enjoy the sound of the Whites in full flight.

Updated: 11:58 Thursday, April 17, 2003