And then the show starts.

The Raconteurs live

24.03.2006, 14:55, Text: Nicholas Tucker

23.03.06 - London, The Astoria

Okay, I'm going to admit to you all right up front that there's a certain disadvantage to reviewing a Raconteurs gig just now. That disadvantage being that no-one's actually heard more than two of their songs. Those two songs being Steady As She Goes and Store Bought Bones -- leaked to us by fiendish, taste-shaping radio executives and spectacled internet wonks alike. The rest... well let's just put it this way, unless you happen to be a fantastically resourceful music journalist you'd pretty much have to guess. I should also point out at this stage that I'm not a fantastically resourceful music journalist.

So I pretty much had to guess. Here ends the detailed disclaimer.

There is, of course a palpable excitement in the air tonight. Despite the low-key nature of the venue - London's small, proudly shabby and frankly dilapidated Astoria - this is no ordinary first outing for a nascent band finding its way. This is Jack-White-of-the-White-Stripes-new-band. Even before I'm properly inside I pass a couple dithering over whether to watch upstairs or downstairs. Heading upstairs the man says, \\\\"It's going to be too much excitement, whatever happens.\\\\" This might be stretching it a bit, I think, until the girl standing next to me faints before the show even starts.

And then the show starts. And the band launch into a blistering version of what can only be described as, Not One Of The Songs I Or Anyone Else Actually Knows. But that's okay because the song feels like a born classic, with Jack and Brendan Benson's voices mimicking the chugging riff before the whole number quickly burns into an all-out assault on the Astoria's ageing sound system. And the songs that follow don't let up - with the exception of a couple of gentler, more acoustic-based tracks obviously penned by the more melodic Brendan Benson. It quickly becomes apparent that The Raconteurs are not the result of Jack White's ego, his need to be seen as more than just The White Stripes. Nor are they a Sunday afternoon knockabout like The Travelling Wilburys. If anything The Raconteurs are closer to Cream, a 'supergroup' assembled from a ragtag of kindred Detroit spirits. The Greenhornes' Jack Lawrence (bass) and Patrick Keeler (drums) lend a depth and charge to Jack and Brendan's collaborative songwriting. Together their incandescently fierce garage rock wall of sound channels any number of musical ghosts out of the bruised PA: from the heavy power of Seventies groups like Stooges and Zeppelin to the garage punk influence of bands like The Gun Club. In fact, one of the songs I could actually name was a blisteringly bluesy version of Love's A House Is Not A Motel, which Jack ripped into with the kind of frantic, darkly lowering energy that would have seen him politely asked to leave the Sixties for terrifying the hippies and turning the acid bad.

However that isn't to say that The Raconteurs aren't their own band -- or even a fleshed out version of The White Stripes. They just meld their influences into a raucous house party of some of the fiercest garage rock on offer. This journalist's only regret was the impossible task of tracking down a set-list. They were on stage for exactly one hour. I'm pretty sure they played the whole album.

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