With White Stripes in a state of flux owing to drummer Meg White's apparent 'acute anxiety,' Jack White has expanded his hobby band into both a quintet and something seemingly more permanent.

For The Raconteurs, White has added colour to the two-tone White Stripes palette. And if his colleagues, even co-singer and former struggling singer-songwriter Brendon Benson (all appealing girlish voice and unappealing Cleo Laine-ish perm), had the blinking, sheepish air of men who'd lucked into a best-selling band, then that was the light of neutral truth shining too brightly for their comfort.

No matter how hard White tried to be just another band member (David Bowie deployed this silly tactic in Tin Machine: his career has never properly recovered), the electricity he radiated, whether distorting his vocals through a vocoder, back to the audience, pounding his keyboards on You Don't Understand Me, or strumming Jimmy Page-esque descending chords on Old Enough, he swamped his bandmates. Such are the perils of being a force of nature.

As befits White's kaleidoscopic musical vision, they were at various, but always tightly drilled points, punk, psychedelia, gospel, Americana and on Steady, As She Goes (were there a Grammy for Best Use Of A Comma In Rock, the Raconteurs' mantelpiece would surely be a little more cluttered), pure, joyous pop.

Much more than a stopgap between White Stripes albums.