If there were seven bursts of bluesy decadence that defined rock post-2000, they were the notes… If there were seven bursts of bluesy decadence that defined rock post-2000, they were the notes that composed the intro to The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” Everyone knew them — from marching bands to music mavens to kid brothers learning to play it on their little Stratocasters.

This week, fans donned their sackcloth and ashes as the Stripes’ members, Jack and Meg White, announced that they were parting as a musical duo last Wednesday. The amicable split was initiated with the intent of preserving “what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way,” according to a news release on the website of Jack White’s record label.

Though not entirely unexpected — the band had been on hiatus for several years — this news comes among a storm of other developments that signal 2011’s significance in that quintessentially countercultural genre, garage rock.

When The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Yardbirds started playing American-styled music with an edge — getting gaggles of screaming girls in the process — young American men started imitating them. The way the Americans played wasn’t as polished as their heroes, but they held a raw edge that inspired a label of “punk” by the late 1960s.

The genre’s initial wave died out by the early 1970s, but scores of bands that loved the raw style continued to develop music that rebelled against this new decade of increasing decadence and industrial music production. In many places these groups became the first punk bands, and the legacy of garage rock continued to live through its descendent genres.

By the late 1990s, groups yearned for that style once again, and on both sides of the Atlantic they set the tone for the post-Limp Bizkit era with a garage-rock revival.

The White Stripes was among the first to bring the raw, tube-driven sound to the modern era, taking the guitar-drum duo format from the seminal rockabilly group Flat Jets Duo and combining it with the experimental funk of The Stooges, circa Funhouse.

As the band departs the industry, it does indeed leave behind a legacy of something “beautiful and special.” Jack White remains one of the most outspoken advocates of keeping the record industry viable with his Third Man Records, inspiring a love for physical releases that’s admirable in the age of torrents.

Along with releases from Jack White’s other projects, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, more White Stripes material is available with a copy of the 2010 live album Under Great White Northern Lights, which captured Jack and Meg during their last tour through Canada.

The whole album burns like a match, singeing the listener with each solo, madcap rhythm and keyboard ballad from “Icky Thump” to “Jolene.”

The Stripes aren’t the only rockers making news, though.

The Strokes — New York’s answer to the Detroit-based Stripes — plays like the Velvet Underground pumped through a Blondie-saturated amplifier. This year the band is coming back with its first album together since 2006’s First Impressions of Earth. The album, tentatively titled Angels, will release sometime this spring.

Considering how long the band’s members have been apart and how many different musical avenues the members have taken — see my previous column on the boys’ side projects — it will be interesting to see how they come back together. With five years of musical development on the other members’ parts, they could transcend their previously patriarchal structure to show that they make up the most diversely creative group in music.

Rock fans will see one more major moment for garage rock across the Atlantic in 2011: the possible revival of The Libertines.

The Libertines emerged in the late 1990s when two men named Carl Barat and Pete Doherty, bound by some innate force, founded the group to conquer the world or sink to the bottom of the Thames trying. They played like the snotty punks of old with a twist of melodic wonder, Barat’s fingers dancing like a madman on his guitar’s fret board while Doherty slammed chords and poetry out with equal vigor.

Through difficult years of Doherty’s increasingly erratic behavior and drug abuse, The Libertines recorded two seminal albums with The Clash’s Mick Jones and provided both intrigue and drama for the British press. No one seemed particularly surprised when the band broke up in 2004, but fans felt and mourned the loss of their distinguished young ruffians.

Through various solo and side projects, the question always remained not if, but when the Libertines would reunite. Last year it did and — with a sober Doherty at the helm — it rocked harder at the Reading and Leeds festivals than perhaps ever before.

As the members chart different courses for 2011, however, there’s a fear that the beloved English garage rockers will pass into another catatonic state.

Whether the “Likely Lads” ever play together again is unknown, but 2011 will regardless prove an interesting year for this primordial and essential genre.