The Racounters have a new album out?

Seriously? They do? In the same way as Broken Boy Soldiers surprised everyone two summers ago, Consolers of the Lonely, the second album by the super-yet-not-really-super-group The Racounters, appeared this Tuesday. The Racounters seem to serve as Jack White's alternative to the White Stripes. While the White Stripes albums feature squalls of guitar feedback, bagpipe-guitar duels and mariachi horn jam sessions while covering the most unexpected songs, The Racounters seem to be a lot more... normal. Their first album was a 60's style pastiche of garage rock and psychedelia, best exemplified by the title track "Broken Boy Soldier." Sure, what they did was pretty unoriginal but they did unoriginal really well.

Here becomes the problem with the Racounter's second album. Half the time Jack White seems to want to make a White Stripes album with a bass player and a second guitarist; half the time he just wants to make a classic rock album. The problem is, The Racounters simply are not the White Stripes. Tracks like "Salute Your Solution" seem to really want to be the lost Icky Thump (it events features the same organ used on said album) single but never quite manage to be anything but forgettable. It just sounds to restrained, to polished, to be a great White Stripes song. The pattern repeats itself for about 10 of the albums 14 tracks, mostly mediocre songs interspersed with a few great tracks.

These great tracks are when the band actually decides to be normal. "Old Enough" is a fantastic southern/country rock song with a fiddle and an organ. Similarly, the Benson penned "Many Shades of Black" sounds nothing like the White Stripes would ever record and it is these tracks which make the album worth listening to. White adds just enough strangeness to these songs, like the squealing guitar solo on the later mentioned track, to prevent them from being formulaic.

In my mind a new album from The Racounters should be a chance to hear something completely different and yet strikingly familiar. It was on the first album but to often this time around it is only second rate White Stripes material. If I want that I'll listen to their B sides.