CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers

Sunday, September 24, 2006

this entry brought to you by the yeah yeah yeahs, "gold lion"





One of the things that I find interesting about Jack White is that, as the front man to The White Stripes, he comes off as one of the most smartly career-minded musicians in music today. His distinct, minimalist sound can be picked out of a crowd of music even if you know the slightest thing about them; you can pick their CDs, with their unique red and white ensemble, out of a crowd of album covers; he even named his last two albums Elephant (might as well have called it a whale of a record), and Get Thee Behind Me Satan (which could allude to a Jesus complex, or a kiss-off to industry leeches, or both). Jack White, the guitar God, appears to be setting up himself for legendary status-- and he is completely succeeding.

Outside The White Stripes, though, Jack White seems to go out of his way to make himself seem ordinary. He produced a throw-away album for a noise band called Whirlwind Heat seemingly to prove he could make mistakes; he produced and performed on an album for Loretta Lynn to show he was just a good ol' boy; and now, with The Raconteurs, he's just a guy in a band with pals Brendan Benson and the borrowed rhythm section of a band called the Greenhornes. Benson, Jack's songwriting partner in crime here, is a lot like Mellow Yellow to Jack's Mountain Dew: he sings in the kind of way that your friend from next door that wants to practice a song for you before he sings it to his girlfriend would-- and it turns out he's actually got a sweet, if restrained, voice. Together, they seem to be making an active effort at making good old-fashioned American music, combining dreamy, sing-along folksy pop with some Zeppelin, a little Sabbath, and, uh, don't tell anyone, but some White Stripes, and they play it in an unspectacular way. They're the best band that doesn't care if they're the best band or not. The kind of band that forever opens for other bands, yet half the audience shows up to see just them.

Of course, for the Raconteurs to be so laid back and for Jack White to try his best to come off as a rock & roll everyman creates a paradox: White isn't an everyman, and here every time he opens his mouth he can't help but come off as an Indie rock legend trying unsuccessfully to blend in-- imagine Robert Plant being a member of the Traveling Wilburys. When he sweetly sings back up, his voice completely overshadows Benson's, and when he does the lead vocals in a song, it sounds fiery and intense; when Benson's laid-back voice croons in the next song, you almost feel sorry for the guy. No, that's not the right word-- you feel a strange since of underdog admiration for him. Could you remain so breezy if you shared vocal duties with the guy who wrote "Fell in Love with a Girl"? Still, Jack's effortless overbearingness is not exactly his fault, and it's a testament to Benson's co-songwriting skills that with multiple listens, his songs easily become as essential and likable as White's, if less weighty, which is what makes The Raconteurs work as a band and not just a side-project.
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on this day last year a one liner, and it's not even all that funny.
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with love from CRS @ 11:50 PM 

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