The Raconteurs
Broken Boy Soldiers
V2/XL/Third Man

Sometimes I think I'm the only person who genuinely likes Jack White anymore. The man gets sick of jettisoning the world with his fake sister, decides to start a band with indie-folk sweetheart Brendan Benson and the rhythm section of his favorite band (the Greenhornes), and against all logic fucking kills it with an amazing album? What's not to love, I ask you? What's not to love?

Broken Boy Soldiers doesn't stray from Jack's regular sound--it's bluesy garage rock, period, though more Van Lear Rose than White Blood Cells. Though the album finds it true voice through sweet mid-tempo songs such as "Yellow Sun" and "Together", the lead single, "Steady As She Goes", steals the show as the stomping LP opener, all while simulating Meg-style cymbal crashes. While that song's B-side (and mid-album gem) "Store Brought Bones" sounds not unlike an organ driven blues-punk version of Ricky Martin's horrid 1999 hit "Shake Your Bon-Bon" (for real, listen to it), the album is steeped in dark humor, from "Intimate Secretary" ("I have a girl and she likes to shop/I had an uncle but he got shot") to the album's artwork: the members of the band busted and bruised, as if they'd just finished rocking themselves to a bloody pulp. Far from a mere side-project, Broken Boy Soldiers is the sound of Jack White and Bendan Benson birthing a new entity from their collective, somewhat mangled psyche, and hopefully one that's sticking around.

Text: Cameron Cook