The exquisitely ornate Empress Ballroom fits perfectly with the decadent air and unabashed romance of The White Stripes - it's easy to picture a bygone era of courting couples gliding across the polished dancefloor.

It's such an ideal fit, in fact, that the Detroit duo recorded their first-ever live DVD there, and this week made their third and fourth visits to the venue in the space of two years.

Jack and Meg kept their roaring audience waiting like teens on a first date until 9.30pm on Friday night, but when the pair emerged they made an immediate impact with a flurry of feedback and riffs that could outmuscle Led Zeppelin.

Not bad for a band who are usually pegged as merely a stripped-down blues duo of plodding drums and thick basslines, but who are increasingly confounding such simplified expectations.

Take this summer's swoonsome top ten single My Doorbell for instance - no guitar, no bass, just a beautiful, piano-led melody and a catchy chorus you can't be immunised against.

Within moments of finishing that they were as heavy as Black Sabbath again, blasting through that other monster hit Hotel Yorba, then cranking up some freaky blues riffs, then bashing at the percussion.

However, less than an hour after they had arrived, they were gone again - but not for long.

Ignoring the crowd's increasingly loud humming of the bassline of their defining song, Seven Nation Army, Jack and Meg had another half an hour of honed blues and semi-acoustic tracks to get through first.

Eventually they could resist the popular mood no longer and zipped through the joyous and almost anthemic Seven Nation Army.

The king and queen of confounding expectations had conquered Blackpool again.

Paul Cockerton