“I’ll fall in love with you,” Jack White croons as the pounding drums and piano of “Apple Blossom” relax at last. “I think I’ll marry you.” Thing is, only months before The White Stripes recorded the duo’s second album, Jack and Meg White had quietly divorced, their marriage ending in less than four years. Though Jack assumed their band was over just as it had found momentum, Meg insisted they press on and finish their second record a year after their debut was done. Good thing, too: Released in 2000, De Stijl distilled the brutalist blues-rock of their debut into its pure essence and expanded the scope of their sound and vision. White Blood Cells may have made the purported brother and sister from Detroit household names when it was released in 2001, but De Stijl had already made it clear that their electric eccentricity was not a fluke. De Stijl hinges, of course, on The White Stripes’ atavistic two-piece rock. Rarely would the band hit harder than on “Let’s Build a Home”, a whoop-out-loud ode to making the most out of disaster, or its chaser, the deliriously fun bit of doggerel called “Jumble, Jumble”. And their riff-and-rhythm tandem was supreme on “Hello Operator”, with Jack’s slide purring over Meg’s tom thwacks. But it’s the new-found finesse that’s most intriguing here, along with all the future possibilities it suggests. While Jack and Meg had covered Bob Dylan on their debut, they instead invoke him on De Stijl’s “Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise”, a prescient bit of romantic defence that pre-empts the attacks Meg would soon face for her wonderfully primitive drumming. And “A Boy’s Best Friend” is a compelling death waltz, with Jack affirming his perennial outsider status over a beat that conjures a faltering heart. Jack steps out as an actual songwriter on De Stijl, digging into subtly surreal narratives. The White Stripes dedicated De Stijl to Blind Willie McTell—the bluesman whose “Your Southern Can Is Mine” ends this set—and Gerrit Rietveld, the designer central to the De Stijl art movement. De Stijl’s self-imposed limitations, like controlled colour schemes and repetitive motifs, remained paramount for The White Stripes on their second album. But this is also the sound of a band finding more room to roam—and of setting up the stage where they would soon find fame.