Make-ups & Break-ups

What with Blur, Suede, The Libertines and many more all recently kissing and making up, you can barely move for people opining on that most contentious of musical activities: the reformation. Did Pete and Carl forsake their Arcadian spirit by getting back together for the dollar? How long will it take the Gallaghers to realise that they’re only as good (still not very) as the sum of their parts? And did anyone ever give a monkey’s about Cast anyway? A series of increasingly repetitive questions, argued to death with more sweeping statements and headstrong opinion than the latest Brother track.

Judging by The White Stripes’ retirement however, what we clearly should be talking about is not when a band should get back together but when they should throw in the towel. Jack and Meg’s bizarrely-timed split is as upsetting for its deflated sense of whimpering redundancy as for the news itself. Here are a band that have paved the way for a garage-rock revolution, who’ve practically copyrighted three colours and who’ve resolutely, undeniably, done things their way. Jack White is notorious for spitting albums out with almost unholy speed, so how come it’s taken them nearly four years of nothing to finally just give up? They had no label worry, no fear of being dropped and fading into obscurity – here were a band that truly could have – and should – have gone out with the same blazing energy that they came in with. But they didn’t.

If you want to know how to do it properly, look at LCD Soundsystem. Turn up, set your goals from the off, fulfil your promise with three albums of total quality and go out leaving a trail of heartbroken devotees in your wake. Even the quiet dignity of Supergrass and the like did it better. Point is, no matter what your legacy, flaking out at the last dash is like a film with no finale. Unless you’re The Wombats, in which case we await the joyful press release with every passing day.