The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely
After all the hoo-ha surrounding the helter-skelter release of this album and the refusal to allow reviewers to have advance copies and all of that gubbins has died down, I think we can now safely address the question of whether or not it is actually any good without tripping over wordy Music 2.0 chatter at every turn.
I’ve already been accused of anti-mainstream snobbery once today, so I am a little hesitant to say this, but I actually do not think this album is especially good. Jack White’s dirty blues are still in evidence, as are some of the more eccentric digressions that decorated the last White Stripes album. And once again Brendan Benson brings just enough pop sensibility to the record to take it a clear step away from other White enterprises.
The thing is that somehow they seem to have landed in the sort of Rawk territory that lacks something of the bite of Broken Boy Soldiers. Many Shades of Black, for example, may be an excellent song but it has more than a whiff of Queen about it, particularly in the chorus. It’s weird.
You know what I think may have happened? I think some of the pace has gone out of their music. Broken Boy Soldiers seemed to distill the excitement of a new project into music that drove forwards excitedly onto the next riff, or the next song, or whatever else they came up with next. This seems to lack a little of that bubbling energy and consequently the album comes across as more than a little bit sluggish.
Am I being an anti-mainstream snob again? I don’t know, possibly, but I am just not very excited by listening to this record.
The Raconteurs – The Switch & the Spur
The Raconteurs – Carolina Drama
The Fun Police have made an appearance and music has consequently returned to the 19th Century, where it will presumably remain until someone rolls a much-needed hand grenade into Web Sherriff Towers.
