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London,
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Reader rating
Description: Jack White and Brendan Benson led blues-rock supergroup playing tracks from their album Consolers Of The Lonely.
Whilst playing around (musically) in 2005, old mates Jack White (that pale bloke in The White Stripes) and Brendan Benson (of solo singer/songwriter fame) came up with the vibrant power pop number Steady, As She Goes and,
lo, The Raconteurs was born. Recruiting bassist Jack Lawrence and Greenhornes drummer Patrick Keeler, the Detroit-based duo became a formidable four-piece and spent a year fiddling about (again, musically) in between individual ventures.
A consensus in music circles is that White should, perhaps, have stuck with sister/lover/ex-wife(?) Meg White and continued churning out mind-bogglingly edgy, minimalist indie-pop-rock classics - Seven Nation Army - danceable arm wavers - Hotel Yorba - and endearing ballads - We're Going To Be Friends.
The air of mystery shrouding his new lot was
never going to be quite as smoky. However, The Raconteurs' critically acclaimed 2006 debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers, hears them spouting such quirky lyrics as “I've got a red Japanese tea-pot/I've got a pen but I lost the top", insinuating that White’s eccentrically brilliant music panache is continuing. But with a more ‘90s Nirvana than ‘60s The Beatles sound.
There’s something of the gothic rock about The Raconteurs, seemingly preparing Brixton for Halloween striding onto the darkened stage against the eerie strains of organ music, dressed largely in black.
Frontmen White and Benson are the obvious performers; their head-banging rock attitude offsets Lawrence and Keeler’s more emo, shoegazing approach to bass guitar and drums.
White leapt about screaming into everybody’s microphones, grinding against his bandmates, tinkling the organ synth ivories and wowing the audience swapping guitars mid-song to achieve the perfect effect.
Blessed with being a new band of old-hats, their mammoth performance was executed naturally confidently. Buckets of energetic passion seeped from their pores. But that was probably sweat; you could feel their stylist tutting as the colossal mass of hair on stage gradually lost its poof. Never mind when Benson’s crowd dive saw him clambering back on stage with a ripped shirt.
Never convincing when a band departs before their signature tune, everybody, complacently, awaited an encore of Steady, As She Goes.
What no one foresaw was an encore paralleling the main performance in length and bettering it in pizzazz. Their final, tantalizingly lingering
Blue Veins, was stretched out until White looked set to have a seizure of passion. And for all that raw rock griminess to be followed by a group hug and bow is really quite charming.
A spine tingling cover of Nancy Sinatra's Bang Bang had a touch of The White Stripe's kick, but only time will tell whether The Raconteurs can
cross boundaries as White's duo does.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
