Amazon.co.uk Review
Formed around the core of old friends Jack White of the White Stripes and fellow Detroit musician Brendan Benson, The Raconteurs’ debut album
Broken Boy Soldiers sees White playing apart from his "sister"-muse Meg for the first time in almost a decade. Backed up by a rhythm section of Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler of The Greenhornes, who Jack previously enlisted to play on Loretta Lynn’s 2004 album
Van Lear Rose, this is a grit-under-the-fingernails rock offering, but with an ear for eclecticism that brings to mind classic rock touchstones from the Beatles’
Revolver to Led Zep’s
Physical Graffiti. "Steady As She Goes" is a catchy, robust rock opener that bears resemblance to the Stripes’ choppy garage-rock minimalism, but before long, The Raconteurs are writing their own brief, White and Benson weaving Lennon-McCartney style vocal harmonies on the likes of "Hands" and "Together", or summoning up a clamourous sense of runaway-train doom on the White-sung "Broken Boy Soldier". It’s sturdy and enjoyable, in a familiar sort of way, but the eccentric "Intimate Secretary" ("This ringing in my ears won’t stop/I’ve got a red Japanese teapot") aside, it lacks the offbeat eccentricity and one-of-a-kind chemistry that makes the Stripes unique. --
Louis Pattison
From the Label
The Raconteurs are a new band made up of old friends, consisting of Jack Lawrence (bass), Patrick Keeler (drums), Brendan Benson (guitars, vocals, keys) and Jack White (guitars, vocals, keys). The seed was sewn in an attic in the middle of a hot summer when friends Jack White and Brendan Benson got together and wrote a song that truly inspired them. This song was "Steady, As She Goes" and the inspiration led to the creation of a full band with the addition of Lawrence and Keeler. While each of these four individuals have had successful careers with their own bands, the culmination of all of their talents is what truly makes The Raconteurs a force to be reckoned with.
The quartet convened at Benson's East Grand Studio to lay down the basic tracks for Broken Boy Soldiers. Work would continue whenever the boys could get together over the next year. The band is now, for its members, all consuming and they now present themselves to be consumed, or at best simply heard.
From the ready-made, radio-friendly quality built into songs like "Steady, As She Goes", to the explosive tenacity of "Store Bought Bones", all the way down to the "hits the cockles of your heart" lullabies that encompass the full length recording, The Raconteurs are more than capable of conquering any genre challenge or tale that they encounter. After all, a raconteur is, by definition, a deft storyteller. And now a new story is unfolding.
~ The Raconteurs
~ The White Stripes
~ The Dead Weather
~ The White Stripes
~ The White Stripes
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