Broken Boy Soldiers
- The Raconteurs
- Band Name: The Raconteurs
- Record Label: V2 / XL
- Release Date: May 16, 2006
- Critic Score
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The songs zing with the excitement of two music nerds caught up in a game of "Top This!" [16 May 2006]
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The real pleasure here is hearing what Jack White can do when he's away from the confines of the White Stripes. [Jul 2006, p.202]
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90An album that sounds effortless, but at times almost dissyingly diverse--imagine The White Album, but made by happy people. [May 2006, p.96]
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An efficient 33 minutes, Broken Boy Soldiers supplies the summer's most gas-conscious road tunes. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.128]
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88Just like with White Stripes albums, the music rattles your brain like no other and gets better with age. [#20, p.97]
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83Sounds like they had as much fun making it as you're going to have listening to it.
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80An impressively rounded, engagingly inventive record that ranges across British blues / R&B, Mod pop, psychedelia and American country rock.
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Much of the Benson/White songwriting ethic seems cut from classic rock radio, finding the meeting point between Cheap Trick and Led Zeppelin and ending up with a timeless album in the process. [#13, p.88]
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This is all Broken Boy Soldiers was ever meant to be: an off-the-cuff collaboration between two friends and one which, despite its imperfections, is an effort worthy of applause.
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80Key to the success of 'Broken Boy Soldiers' is the relatively restrained musicianship.
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80Much of Broken Boy Soldiers is fired by the same liberated, intuitive spirit that drives the Stripes. [Jun 2006, p.86]
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80It's neither deep nor meaningful, but Broken Boy Soldiers succeeds in sounding like four guys having fun making music; albeit music that's as elegant as it is raucous. [Jun 2006, p.108]
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If you have a favorite Foghat album or can name a single member of Deep Purple, you will love Broken Boy Soldiers; fortunately, it doesn't end there. [18 May 2006, p.226]
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80The cool sound of hot days, fragrant smoke, and FM radio at ear-splitting volume. [Jun 2006, p.77]
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80What the Raconteurs offer is the middle-ground between White's muscular, distorted blues and Benson's Who-goes-bubblegum approach. The end result seems unlikely to change the face of music as we know it, but it's often breathtakingly executed.
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80It's a hugely enjoyable record, with songs on it as good as anything the individuals involved have produced elsewhere. It's simply that high standards achieved elsewhere aren't consistently obtained throughout.
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It's better this way, all apologies to Meg White.
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Within its own little garage, the album succeeds completely, but in the big picture, Broken Boy Soldiers never feels especially important.
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73Tie on the celebrity blindfold, and Broken Boy Soldiers no longer seems like that much of an achievement-- just another case of men recreating their favorite vinyl deep cuts, if a bit more skillfully than most FM scrapbookers.
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It's brief and even a little slight, but it's almost as much fun to listen to as it must have been to make.
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70Broken Boy Soldiers won't reverse global warming, but it certainly tops Get Behind Me Satan for rockin' entertainment.
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The moody "Together" reveal[s] what's possible when White and Benson join forces. If only collaborations in this vein had been given greater consideration, the Raconteurs might have had something truly revelatory beyond a whimsical side project.
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I was really hoping that some critical insight the bigger publications had missed would shine through here, and on this front I am let down, albeit pleasantly: all this record strives to be is a power-pop record, of second-string Lennon/McCartney-crossed-with-Americana type that proliferated in the '70s and has carried on, doggedly, through the decades.
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70Like so many all-star bands before them, The Raconteurs could be one and done. But don't place the blame on this fertile and genuine debut.
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Mr. White shares the songwriting, and the spotlight, in the Raconteurs, but it sounds as if he's still the wild-card inspiration, the one who puts the structural quirks and guitar fireworks into the songs.
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Combine the dull wordplay with the uneven tone and Soldiers feels indulgent quickly -- and that's saying something for an album that's just 33 minutes.
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When it comes down to it, it ain't gonna change your world any.
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60No one is breaking any ground here, and White fanatics looking for a new White Stripes record should temper their expectations. But as far as side projects go, this is as good as it gets.
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60If only the rest of the album were as good as the lead single.
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Nothing is really very exciting here, or very interesting.
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50The results are either stiffly egalitarian... or stripped of personality altogether. [Jun 2006, p.143]
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Instead of consolidating their respective strengths, Broken Boy Soldiers is White and Benson compromising them in favor of finding an agreeable but ultimately dull and colorless middle ground.
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The songwriting is bland and the production is overdone.
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In the end, though, Broken Boy Soldiers merely makes you wonder what Meg White has been up to.
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If The Raconteurs were any other group (that is, if The Raconteurs didn't have Jack White), the press/Blogosphere would slam it.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 51 out of 57
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Mixed: 3 out of 57
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Negative: 3 out of 57
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9
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bobd10Great album.