- The Observer, Sunday 23 April 2006
It's a rare thing to be able to predict that a brand new band will be massive within a few months, but such is the case with these four hopefuls from America. OK, we're cheating. Do the Raconteurs really qualify as brand new, when they feature Jack White, the world's most prestigious rock star, on sabbatical from the White Stripes?
Following OMM's photoshoot within the faded grandeur of Wilton's Music Hall in East London, Jack White introduces his fellow Raconteurs over lunch - co-frontman Brendan Benson, the much-fêted power-pop-style singer-songwriter; and Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler (drums), the rhythm section from Cincinnati's the Greenhornes.
'It started so naive, like most affairs,' quips White, who sports a fetching pair of green striped loon pants. He explains how he and Benson first casually started writing a song together in Detroit circa 2004. In order to record it, White called in his Greenhornes buddies. Hey presto - a band, and its opening shot, 'Steady, As She Goes'.
Their album, Broken Boy Soldiers, came together over the ensuing 18 months. It's short and packed with deceptively straightforward, vaguely prog-ish retro-pop. Think the Raspberries, with big dollops of Cream.
'We've all been talking about doing a band together ever since we met,' White says. This was back in late Nineties Detroit, when Benson, not White, was king of the scene, and signed to Virgin, which led to an unhappy sojourn in California.
'I was home visiting when I saw the White Stripes,' Benson recalls. 'I thought, "Man, I'm moving back!" I couldn't believe this young guy was doing old blues songs and writing lyrics that were way too intelligent for how they looked - this whole red and white thing.'
White has enforced the Stripes' binary colour-coding for seven years, and could be forgiven for kicking back now in a more knockabout combo (bass player included). However, he has instigated some strange, slackness-preventing rules in the Raconteurs, too. For instance, he coerced Benson into playing slide guitar (a technique of which he himself is an undisputed master).
White's lyrics for 'Steady, As She Goes' are fatalistic vis-a-vis finding lasting romance. Not long after writing them, he met the model Karen Elson, married her and moved to Nashville. He seems unusually at ease, brandishing his eyeball-like wedding ring. But he's eager to point out that although he will return to the White Stripes, this band is a priority.
'It's easy for us to say, "Hey, don't call us a vanity project or some dumb side thing."' he observes, 'but you have to show people that. You just have to get in front of them and play.'
· The Raconteurs' debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers (XL) is out on 15 May
