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Yet it's all primitivist, not primitive. The White Stripes' problem is that the effort and allusions show; all the self-consciousness is still on the surface. And more often than not, Jack's skills end up sounding like stunts rather than songs. What comes across are the gestures — the sudden chomp of a distortion pedal, the outlandish vocal vibrato — rather than the feelings they once signaled. The heat of the old styles becomes a badge of cool.

On "Elephant," the duo stretches its format further than before. "Seven Nation Army" starts the album with a White Stripes rarity — a bass line — and piles on with both lead and rhythm guitar. During "There's No Home for You Here," Jack's voice is suddenly multitracked into a chorus, sounding like Freddie Mercury of Queen. Throughout the album, Jack regularly overdubs an extra guitar or keyboard, filling out the sound but staying raw.

But a band still needs songs, and "Elephant" delivers less than half an album's worth. The standout, once again, is a cover: "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself," a Burt Bacharach-Hal David song previously recorded by Dusty Springfield and Elvis Costello, among others. With a full-fledged melody to support him, Jack forges a magnificently overwrought three-minute melodrama, from a shakily calm opening to a blast of despair.

"There's No Home for You Here" thoroughly anatomizes a breakup, and overcomes its Queen and Beatles references. An acoustic solo by Jack, "You've Got Her in Your Pocket," drops his affectations to convey finely observed sympathy and disapproval. There's dark comedy in "The Hardest Button to Button," and decent crunch in "Seven Nation Army" and "Black Math." But the album's most lasting song may be its most uncharacteristic one: "In the Cold, Cold Night," a quiet admission of desire sung by Meg to a vamp recalling "Fever." The rest of the album reverts to posturing and in-jokes: a blues parody, straightforward steals (like the "Secret Agent Man" melody in "Hypnotize"), a throwaway guest appearance by the English garage-rocker Holly Golightly. Jack whoops and shouts and wrings his guitar neck, but the songs ring hollow. Going back to basics is both a formal strategy and a quest.

The White Stripes know the strategy inside-out: the self-imposed limitations, the acceptance of legacies. But the quest — for something that might as well be called heart — is still ahead of them.

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