The Raconteurs bring together the massive talenst of Jack White, Brendan Benson and the Greenhornes in a band that all parties say is much more than a side project. Just don't call them a supergroup, writes Jim Carroll.
Like most bands, The Raconteurs started off with one song. A sweet little tune called Steady, As She Goes, it begins as a slinky slow-burner before an old-fashioned swagger kicks in and a sucker-punch of a groove knocks you over. It really is a track you won't tire of in a hurry.
Like most bands, The Raconteurs went on to write a few more songs and they now have a whole bunch of top-drawer tunes to their name. Their debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers, is set to be one of the year's most exuberant releases, the sound of talented musicians heading for the hills for the sheer hell of it.
Like most bands, The Raconteurs knew each other a long time before the idea of actually forming the band thing came up. It was not necessary to post "musicians wanted" ads in the pages of the Detroit Free Press or on Craig's List to assemble these troops.
Brendan and the tall Jack fellow have been in and out of bands around Detroit for years. Patrick and the small Jack fellow made a good living playing in another band. All four have shared stages and dressing-rooms, so the in-jokes came quick and easy when they gathered to record some tunes.
That, though, is where comparisons between The Raconteurs and most other bands end. After all, brand new acts don't elicit this much attention months ahead of their album hitting the shops. The number of new bands who will go from playing their first shows together to spending a few days talking to the international media are few and far between. And newbies rarely get to play their first shows more than 3,000 miles from home base.
With this band, however, the expectations are already huge and you can put most of this down to the man with the firmest handshake of the four Raconteurs gathered in a basement room in a London hotel. Jack White just wants to be seen as one of the guys for this outing, but he knows that The White Stripes and the 10 million album sales they've accumulated worldwide come as part of the furniture and fittings every time he pops out his front door. After all, The Raconteurs didn't sell out their UK shows just because Steady, As She Goes sounds so darn good.
Yet you could also say something similar about White's fellow band members.
It's obvious that none of the Mid-Westerners in this room need to be in this band just to make ends meet.
Brendan Benson has long been regarded as one of the most talented and prolific musicians to come out of Detroit. His last album The Alternative To Love, was a melodic tour-de-force, and White was to the fore in applauding its charms.
Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence are two-thirds of The Greenhornes, a Cincinnati band much admired for their rootsy garage rock who featured prominently on the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. They were also the rhythm section on Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose album, the one produced by White during another non-Stripe outing.
As strange as it may seem in an era when bands are micro-marketed and niche-targeted to the nth degree, what brought these four together in the first place really was a song. "Believe it or not, it's a true story," says White. "It happened completely by accident. One day, I dropped by Brendan's house and he played me this song which didn't have any lyrics. He asked me could I write some lyrics and I said sure." "I mean, I thought he was coming over with the lyrics already written," chips in Benson. "It should have been obvious then that he doesn't listen to me." "That was Steady, As She Goes," continues White. "Patrick and Jack came up to Detroit not too long after that and we all decided to work on some stuff. We had been talking about doing music together for years so it was time to stop talking and actually do something. That song started a whole album and a band."
The four spent a couple of weeks during the summer of 2004 writing and recording in Benson's studio. What appeared when the amps were on were songs about rabbits and soldiers, toys and teapots. You could join up a few dots to their unique selling points (Together has a touch of the Bensons to it, while the title track features the ferocious howling that studs the best of White's work), yet the influences and inspirations move all over the place.
Decked out with rich harmonies, powerful melodies and richly psychedelic textures, it sounds not unlike a long-lost album from the late 1960s.
The band recorded everything that was played, so by the time they headed back to their other gigs, the as-yet-unnamed band had an album raring to go. "It really felt like we were doing it in a dream, it just didn't seem real," says Benson about the speed at which they worked.
Finding the time to do something with those recordings wasn't quite so easy. It's taken until now for projects to be completed, commitments to be fulfilled and schedules to be cleared to allow The Raconteurs to roam.
White thinks waiting was the right thing to do. "We all decided that there was no point just doing this as some rushed album and throwing it out there. It needs as much time as our other bands and stuff so that's why we've waited until now. We think it deserves a fair go. We don't want it to be seen as a side-project or a supergroup or anything naff like that. We want to be treated as a real band."
While this idea of a band of equals is grand in theory, it doesn't always work like that. "We can sit around and talk about the fact that it's not Jack White's supergroup until we're blue in the face but we know it will take more than us saying that over and over again," says Benson.
"I think it's when we go out and play shows that people will realise what we're on about. The shows we did around the UK last week were our first, so we're really still forming and sorting ourselves out. But the shows were cool. No one's shouting out for White Stripes songs and people seem willing to see us as a new band."
Despite the fact this is an interview with all four, it doesn't take long for White to dominate the conversation. It could be because he's the most awake of the four (he says a bout of insomnia meant he was walking around Clerkenwell at dawn) or it could be because being the frontman has become his standard default setting.
"I don't want to be the leader of another band," White protests at one stage. "Right now, I'm happy to be just a guy in the band." Benson adds a few words here and there, but Keeler and Lawrence seem content to let the other two do the talking. While all of this attention must seem bizarre in the extreme to the taciturn duo, The Raconteurs serves as a vindication of sorts for Benson, someone whose solo albums have never quite reaped the rewards they so richly merit.
Benson, though, is happy to leave that side on the shelf for now. "This whole thing is a chance for me, and I suppose for all of us, to assume new roles. I'm not thinking about what comes next because I don't know if or when The Raconteurs will end. Obviously eventually I'll do a solo record . . . but right now, this is my life."
White, too, has put everything else on hold to see where this adventure takes him. While Meg White is drumming out the soundtrack for a flick called You Are Going to Prison, this White is slumming it in a pretty straightforward four-square rock'n'roll band. It's the most un-White Stripes scenario you can imagine.
"You've always got to let the music dictate where you're going to go," he believes. "You've got to keep exploring. When this band started, we didn't plan all this. The music could have gone any way. This could have been a country band for all we knew. I love leaping into the unknown. And I like starting all my albums like that, with a completely white canvas."
Like the White Stripes, the music The Raconteurs are coming up with harkens back to a much earlier era. "That isn't out of nostalgic reasons but about getting downto the real source of things," believes White. "I think a lot of modern technology prevents bands from getting down to the real shit because it obscures what's valuable about the music.
"I hate the term 'retro band' and don't want to be seen to be recreating the past. If it sounds similar to something old, it's because we're using the same equipment. It's the same way as oils produce a certain kind of painting. You're not going to get any better than that. If the modern stuff is progression then I don't want to progress."
As with his folky contributions to the Cold Mountain soundtrack and his work with Loretta Lynn, The Raconteurs allows White to flex some different creative muscles. "There are so many other things that I want to do other than make music with Meg, but I'm getting around to them one at a time.
"I mean, I've always considered myself to be a folk artist and everything I've done has revolved around the blues. It's why I was really happy to do those songs for Cold Mountain. I wasn't doing it to stretch out my career or anything like that, I was doing it because I was really interested in the music."
With The Raconteurs, White can also see some folky tie-ins. "Take the name, for instance. That's about us being travelling musicians and storytellers. That's what people look for when they hear music, isn't it? The story - and it's usually a love story. It's something they can relate to or fantasise about or aspire to.
"They're the same old stories that every band tells and that musicians have been telling for thousands of years. It's not about this band being more original than that band, it's our take on these stories which are there from generation to generation."
For the next couple of months, White and his fellow Raconteurs will be telling their tales to whoever listens. The odds are there will be plenty who will stop by to give them the time of day. While Benson talks about being "suspicious" about all the rave reviews and notices received so far, White just shakes his head. "You're such a pessimist, Brendan," he says to his band-mate. "Me, I always expect good reactions."
Broken Boy Soldiers is released on XL Records on May 12th
