Music

‘A lot of times,’ claimed Brendan Benson recently, ‘I think collaborations are just a series of compromises that each other makes. But with Jack, it was different, because of our mutual respect and because I was turned on by his ideas.’ The debut album by Benson, the resting White Stripes frontman and the rhythm section of Cincinnati’s ’60s garage rockers The Greenhornes, strongly suggests that Jack White also had the creative horn.

It would be easy to regard The Raconteurs as a vanity project with in-built slavering reception – a kind of Traveling Wilburys for the iPod generation – but White hardly needs a credibility boost and pal Benson has been happily holding his own for ten years, via three LPs of his sweetly raffish powerpop. Given the visceral wallop of White’s minimalist blues, it would also be fair to assume that his sound would dominate. ‘Broken Boy Soldiers’, however, confounds on both fronts.

It’s a terrific album, built on a rock- steady confidence and pumped full of the kind of free-wheeling enthusiasm that surely results from Benson and White stepping out of their usual roles. You can spot their respective handiwork: the title track’s bluesy, psych-rock wigginess hasWhite written all over it, as do ‘Level’ and mighty closer ‘Blue Veins’, with its haunted, Deep South twang; however, the Small Faces-like ‘Intimate Secretary’ and ‘Together’ – which recalls The Eagles’ ‘Desperado’ – must surely be Benson’s.

Still, there’s no sense of territories defended or grudgingly ceded and so surprises abound. Check out ‘Hands’, which suggests Tom Petty’s country rock grittied-up at Toerag Studios, the mellow grunge and fulsome, burred vocalising of ‘Call It A Day’ or ‘Store Bought Bones’, with its demon guitar work and extraordinary punched harmonies. ‘I’m adding something new to the mixture, so there’s a different hue to your picture’, runs ‘Together’. Benson’s words, maybe, but the sentiment shared.