Rock champion meets indie-pop middleweight: This is the quaint tale of the Raconteurs (French for “storytellers”), composed of Jack White, Brendan Benson and two members of the Greenhornes, a frequent opener for both artists’ regular gigs. The tight little gang, as the story goes, shut themselves up in a stuffy attic, declared they were not “a rock star’s side project,” and fashioned a two-headed monster of an album.
Broken Boy Soldiers is a feat in sharing, with White and Benson divvying up not only the vocal duties (obsessively trading off the spotlight with call-and-response action), but also the musical baggage — a little gritty here, a little pop-ballad-y there. It’s the pop that sometimes goes flat: On “Together,” Benson croons, “You gotta learn to learn to live and live and learn,” as White whines away what is presumably his despair at this string of moralistic vapidity. Laziness peaks on “Intimate Secretary,” a fine track ruined by rhyming arbitrary words ending in “-ot” — try it at home, you’ll probably get better results — proving minimalist lyricism, whatever the intent, works a whole lot better with a minimalist sound (i.e. the White Stripes).
Yet this dual creature has a lovely common body, sculpted out of ’60s-’70s nostalgia of the finest kind. The Raconteurs flaunt it proudly and easily, from hoarse Led Zep-esque howls on the grandiose title track to psychedelic diversions and expert Beatles referencing throughout, even pulling off a chilling backwards loop on blues closer “Blue Veins.”
Truth be told, Benson is too clean-cut to match White’s impulsive wizardry. While a full band makes Jack less of a dull boy, they still have to edit their story before they trump the Stripes.
The Raconteurs will perform at Soma on July 19
