Ever unpredictable, and with a more experimental sound

Pop royalty is flocking in this fall -- from Elton John to U2 to Bruce Springsteen -- but no engagement evokes more excitement than the return of the White Stripes. The Detroit duo put garage rock back into the spotlight and has made unpredictability a cornerstone of its live shows. The Stripes are famed for not using set lists and just getting up and winging it, which can be a vital alternative to some of the sterile, every-night-is-the-same shows by many headliners.

The Stripes are even playing an unusual venue -- the Opera House, where they'll hold court for three nights, Sept. 20-22. Only one other rock act (Lucinda Williams) has played there since it was refurbished.

''They wanted to play somewhere completely different from where they had been before," says John Innamorata, a talent booker with Tea Party Concerts, which would love to put more music into the Opera House but at the moment only has one other show (Sigur Ros on Sept. 15) because the venue's schedule is already crowded with theater productions.

The Stripes, of course, are theatrical in their own way. Sporting a pencil-thin mustache and often an overcoat and top hat and a color scheme obsessively featuring red, white, and black, singer/guitarist Jack White has become one of rock's great eccentrics. He's also a pace-setting guitar god, having mastered electric-blues licks by the likes of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck while being equally conversant with the deeper rural blues of Son House and Robert Johnson. And Stripes drummer Meg White (Jack's ex-wife, still sometimes referred to as his ''sister," even by the prankish Jack himself) is a simpler but no less effective player in the duo's chemistry.

The Stripes concerts come on the heels of ''Get Behind Me Satan," their fifth album, which has not been as successful as their previous two discs, 2003's ''Elephant," which boasted the breakout hit ''Seven Nation Army," and 2001's ''White Blood Cells," which made the garage-rock movement a reality rather than just a media creation.

The latest album sat at No. 67 on the Billboard Hot 200 last week. It has baffled many listeners because it finds Jack White adopting a more experimental, piano-based stance. ''They're a quirky band, and sometimes you have to be patient," says Max Tolkoff, program director with WFNX-FM (101.7). ''Don't forget that 'Seven Nation Army' was not an automatic slam-dunk at radio, either. You had to hear it about 100 times for it to sink in. But I would never count them out."

''Frankly, we're warming up slowly to the [new album] because it does sound so different," says Dave Douglas, program director with WBOS-FM (92.9). ''But they've stepped up and are trying to create a new pathway musically. . . . They could just be way ahead of the curve, and history may prove that out."

In their defense, the Stripes have never been complacent. And Jack White is too much of a talent -- check out his production work on Loretta Lynn's Grammy-winning ''Van Lear Rose" album -- for us to ever stop paying close attention to his every move.

Never count the Stripes out, period.