The Raconteurs at the Hammerstein Ballroom

Jack White

Two vocalists/guitarists, Jack White and Brendan Benson, were inspired by a song they wrote while jamming in Detroit, Michigan. This led to them forming the Raconteurs in 2005 with bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler, both of a band called the Greenhornes. The Raconteurs recorded and toured in 2006 and 2008, but then, as all the members engaged in other projects, the band remained dormant for about 10 years. The Raconteurs released a third album, Help Us Stranger, on June 21, 2019. The band currently is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Thanks in part to Jack White's marquee name, the Raconteurs headlined two nights at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Fans may have been surprised to learn upon arrival that they had to lock their cell phones in pouches until the end of the concert. The Raconteurs demanded full attention and achieved it. With the addition of touring multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age and the Dead Weather, the Raconteurs performed a set featuring eight songs from the current album and five songs from each of the earlier two albums. White and Benson shared lead vocals fairly evenly, but many of the songs pivoted on bursts of coarse guitar leads and crunching riffs that sometimes were louder than the vocals. Guitars dominated, and vocal melodies followed closely behind, insuring that this was more than a head banging experience. As such, the cohesion of the pounding music and the occasionally loose in-the-moment guitar jams made the show very alive. Maybe the cell phone embargo was a good idea, because the concert was far more exciting than anything on our cell phones.

Setlist:

1. Bored and Razed
2. Level
3. Old Enough
4. Help Me Stranger
5. Somedays (I Don't Feel Like Trying)
6. Don't Bother Me
7. Live a Lie
8. You Don't Understand Me
9. Hands
10. Only Child
11. Broken Boy Soldier (with a snippet of Them's "Gloria" before the final verse)
12. Top Yourself
13. Blue Veins

Encore:

1. Consoler of the Lonely
2. Sunday Driver
3. Now That You're Gone
4. Carolina Drama
5. Steady, as She Goes