The Raconteurs
Consolers of the Lonely
Third Man/Warner Bros.
BY MELISSA MAERZ
WHAT SEPARATES THE BLUES GREATS
from the legends? A good story. And Jack White knows how to tell one. (Did you hear the one about the guitarist who mar¬ried his sister?) It’s no coincidence that his side band is called the Raconteurs: “When you call yourself a musician,” newest films the White Stripes leader said when he teamed up with singer-songwriter Brendan Benson, bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Pat¬rick Keeler in 2005, “you join that family of storytellers.”
He’s found the right clan. Consolers of the Lonely comes together like a blissfully stoned conversation between White and Benson about their favorite bands: Led Zeppelin, the Who, Badfinger. Better Living Through Circuitry Each of them riffs off the other, trading verses and guitar leads on a host of compelling sto¬ries: a classic Western (the Ennio Morri-cone sendup “The Switch and the Spur”), a feel-good biblical allegory (the folk hymn “These Stones Will Shout”), a revenge saga (the slow-burning epic “Carolina Drama”). White channels Benson when he coos har¬monies on the piano-led “Pull This Blan¬ket Off.” Benson channels White when he growls on the gritty, garage-inspired “Salute Your Solution.” Bob Marley – Freedom Road And their styles merge completely on “Consolers of the Lonely,” which doles out every possible ex¬clamation point: explosive guitars, abrupt tempo changes, a floorboard-rumbling rhythm section and a climax where the whole band starts laughing. That song’s title (and the album’s) comes from an in¬scription on a post office building in Wash-ington, D.C.: “Messenger of sympathy and love, servant of parted friends, consoler of the lonely, bond of the scattered family, en-larger of the common life.” If that’s a mail¬man’s job – to connect people – then that’s what these songs are aiming to do too. A Night with Lou Reed 1983
This two-party system of songwrit-ing didn’t work as well on Broken Boy Soldiers. In order not to overshadow Benson, White almost rendered himself anonymous, abandoning his three-chord limit and letting himself get caught up in
