Album #19: Consolers of the Lonely (2008)
The Raconteurs\Saboteurs
Genre: Rock & Roll
Dedicated to MB Member: Big3killedmyraindog
1. "Consoler of the Lonely"
2. "Salute Your Solution"
3. "You Don't Understand Me"
4. "Old Enough"
5. "The Switch and the Spur"
6. "Hold Up"
7. "Top Yourself"
8. "Many Shades of Black"
9. "Five on the Five"
10. "Attention"
11. "Pull This Blanket Off"
12. "Rich Kid Blues"
13. "These Stones Will Shout"
14. "Carolina Drama"
The White Stripes left a bad taste in my mouth initially. Something about that incestual rock combo made my skin crawl and my stomach turn initially, but my kids who were teens when they broke on the scene loved them and over time I’ve come to understand that they were right and I was wrong. (I’ll never tell them that) So you think I’d have learned by the time Jack White spun off into the Raconteurs to follow the paraphrased words of the Beatles and “give (the four)
piece a chance. But no I was again to cool for school and turned the other way. Then I started working at my brothers bar during days to keep busy and help him save a few bucks, one of the albums that came up a lot on the jukebox was “Broken Boy Soldiers” the debut album of the aforementioned Raconteurs. At first I dismissed it as simply catchy, but after a year of growing increasingly fond of it, I’ve come around fully and now embrace the album and the band.
This takes us to the second and latest installment from the futuristic foursome. From the outlandish and irrepressible title track, to the melodic and sinister “You Don’t Understand Me” the skiffle reminiscent “Old Enough”, the fun and funky charming roller rink couples only ballad “Many Shades of Black” and truly throughout fourteen song melee, this amalgamation of creativity and talent has demonstrated that they’ve found the formula for popular, unique and interesting rock and roll music in the modern digital heavy generation. The “Looking for an accomplice” change of tempo 90 seconds into the first track tells you all you need to know about what this band thinks of “the rules” to writing a pop song. These are pop songs, like all great rock and roll, soul, funk, jazz, blues and anything, the ability to relate and transcend the listeners preconceptions is a keystone to writing great and timeless music. The Book is out on this band, but I’d safely say, so far so good.
I think it’s intentional but it’s no less magnetic because. They seem to have a sort of raw beauty and simplicity to them, like a hot 70’s chick in playboy with real breasts a little hair down there and no airbrushing. (Sorry for that) It’s like they recorded themselves in the one with the richest parents’ basement in high school, I fu
ckin’ love it. The longer I listen to this album the more songs I discover I really like, this is not S.O.P for me, I usually tire of music quickly and then find a nostalgic connection has emerged there after. If I was to critique it would be that they are still legitimately a bit raw as song writers. They are a little hit and miss lyrically I think and they are times where find myself waiting fro a bridge or outro that never comes. These are knit picking of course and if I was the kind of guy who rated albums before I’d come to a complete opinion on them this one rate very high like 4 of 5 stars or 9 out 10 or 1 ¾ thumbs up. As a fan of 1960's and 1970's hard rock, it's impossible for me to look past the influence and the similarities here. This is exactly the album "The Who" would make being boring 40 years later. This is a band of exceptional indivdiuals who were already part of su8ccesful projects, yet they saw a chance to dso something bigger and better. This is how Cream, Zeppelin the Who and so many more were created it's not the only way to do it, but thankfully they took this route and I happened upon them when I did.