The Raconteurs, Consolers Of The Lonely
Featured Album
Follow-up from White, Benson & Co. screams like a banshee and kicks like a mule
Released with exuberant haste, The Raconteurs' follow-up to Broken Boy Soldiers is rich with energy, invention and dynamics. Although its heartbeat is heavy guitar rock, the album takes countless brief, brisk detours into modern variations of folk, garage-thrash and even (whisper it) Prog-Rock. So much is crammed in that you wonder how Jack White succeeds in retaining any fresh ideas for the White Stripes.
And it is all about White. When The Raconteurs formed in Detroit in '05, much was made of their being a "super-group". The term flapped rather loosely: while White's co-singer-guitarist-keyboardist Brendan Benson had something approaching a name, few outside the immediate circle can have known much of killer rhythm section Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler. Now that the band has been Grammy-nominated and laden with accolades, they stand as their own entity. Consolers Of The Lonely presents that entity as a fully-charged yet complex beast, deeply in thrall to both loud Led Zeppelin and quiet Led Zeppelin and given unique flavour by White's wired performances (both as histrionic vocalist and unapologetic axe hero).
Throughout, a backdrop of murmurs and giggles can be heard (along with studio-speak including a matter-of-fact "we'll double track that"). It makes the whole thing feel loose and spontaneous, as do the count-ins, the hollers of "Woo! Awlright!" and the frequent false starts/stops of White's licks. The title track roars in like AC/DC only to wrong-foot you with a second, dominant riff. White sounds high-pitched and gravelly, and '70s rock outfit Nazareth are recalled — for the first time in a long time.
Single "Salute Your Solution" maintains the momentum, boasting a cheesy riff that wouldn't have been rejected by Cheap Trick or Raspberries. "You Don't Understand Me" shifts into soft-rock mode, piano at the fore, and though it feels wrong to mention The Feeling or Daniel Powter, the comparison is unavoidable. The surprises continue with "The Switch And The Spur" (which utilizes almost Tolkien-esque in imagery — it dares to use the word "doth"), the "Ramble On" rip-off of "Top Yourself", and the Benson-led Eagles/Queen homage of "Rich Kid Blues". The rest is near-basic blues: often as abrasive as The Hives, sometimes as retro as Black Crowes.
With the volume set permanently to "piercing", there is always enough going on to keep you alert, alive and, frequently, alarmed. On the electric folk finale of "Carolina Drama", White drawls, "I'm not sure if there's a point to the story, but I'm gonna tell it again…" This may compress the history of rock into one big, bravado-fuelled monster, but it makes brand new shapes, screams like a banshee and kicks like a mule.
