White Door

SCRATCHING THE DOOR highlights tracks recorded by The Flaming Lips’ original line-up, which featured Wayne Coyne’s brother Mark on vocals. The album includes the band’s first and second cassette demos, in addition to The Flaming Lips first self-released EP, and marks the first time all of these recordings have been collected together on a single release. Among the other featured tracks are covers of The Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,” Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” and the theme song from the 1960’s Batman television series, which previously appeared on Rykodisc’s 2002 compilation, Finally The Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.

According to Jack White, Get Behind Me Satan deals with "characters and the ideal of truth," but in truth, the album is just as much about what people expect from the White Stripes and what they themselves want to deliver. Advance publicity for the album stated that it was written on piano, marimba, and acoustic guitar, suggesting that it was going to be a quiet retreat to the band's little room after the big sound, and bigger success, of Elephant. Then "Blue Orchid," Get Behind Me Satan's lead single, arrived. A devilish slice of disco-metal with heavily processed, nearly robotic riffs, the song was thrilling, but also oddly perfunctory; it felt almost like a caricature of their stripped-down but hard-hitting rock.