Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 24/03/08
Label: XL Records

Side projects (a term Brendan Benson and Jack White no doubt loathe as much as supergoup) are always revealing, though rarely in a flattering way. Often a way for pressured stars to breathe a little and let down their hair (think Billy Corgan in Zwan, Robert Smith in The Glove), they're seldom as much fun for the listener. So while there must now be legitimate doubt over which of his two bands is White's priority these days, he certainly sounds looser and more relaxed on "Consolers Of The Lonely" than on "Icky Thump". But he doesn't sound as good.

It's a question of discipline. Along with the more eccentric White Stripes regulations (the dress codes, the allergy to modern technology) comes their sonic restraint, with most songs boiling down to two instruments and a voice. It's this bang bang basic blueprint that makes them sound so elemental and distinctive, and prevents them lapsing from retro into derivative. Perhaps inevitably for a band that marries two songwriters and two big egos, no such restraint operates on The Raconteurs. The result is both overstuffed and overcooked.

From the Free-on-steroids power chord that opens the title track onwards, "Consolers Of The Lonely" piles riff on riff, bombast upon bombast. Every fanboy instinct is indulged, from the growling Zeppelin guitars of "Top Yourself" to the Deep Purple squalls of "Attention". At its most excessive this isn't so much heavy as dense, an impenetrable, airless forest of guitar licks and tricks, like stumbling into a Fender office party after the last Jack Daniels has been drunk. Perhaps that's why the gentler moments - like the rambling, Dylanesque closer "Carolina Drama" - come as such a welcome relief.

Of course, any album featuring two talents as bright as White and Benson is going to have its moments. Despite its title, "Many Shades Of Black" is the poppiest, lightest number, with a tender Benson vocal and brass flourishes right out of Wings (this, of course, is a very good thing). Both "Five On The Five" and "Salute Your Solution" feature White at his most manic and spittle-flecked, backed by razor riffs and snarling bass lines, when The Raconteurs almost add up to the sum of their parts.

But for every highlight, there's a self satisfied concoction like "The Switch And The Spur", a western pastiche featuring Morricone horns, lavish strings and the audible sound of the two pals slapping each other on the back. Great fun to record, no doubt, and probably great live, but an annoying conceit on record. It's at moments like these you find yourself hoping White doesn't give up the day job.

    by Jaime Gill