The Raconteurs - Help Us Stranger

Pitchfork 64

After an 11-year hiatus, the first album from Jack White’s other other band floats in weightless, haughty bliss through a perpetual 2008.

The Guardian 60

(Third Man Records)
Jack White’s eccentricity is well contained by his bandmates, but the macho politics undermine the tautness

When the Raconteurs released their debut in 2006, co-founder Jack White was emerging from his imperial phase – the White Stripes would put out their final record the following year. The four-man side project initially seemed like a release valve for White, an outlet for the ideas the self-imposed strictures of the White Stripes had stymied. A decade on, however, and a Raconteurs reunion feels like the inverse: as White surfaces from a period of unfettered self-indulgence – three solo albums in and he’s well-established as an eccentric and largely irrelevant loose cannon – a new album provides an opportunity for some restraint.