I've been watching a lot of old White Stripes footage lately, from when they first toured The White Stripes. The shows around 2001/02 seemed to have so much energy, with such solid, if slightly formulaic songwriting.

Elephant was great.. but after that, I've almost completely gone off them, and find myself going back and watching old footage/listning to the first three albums. Listening to the new album, bar Icky Thump, it seems White is really struggling to do something different with the band. Anyone else think he's taken them as fas as they can go, or am I just a cliched 'they were better in the olden days' fan?