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With Consolers of the Lonely, the Raconteurs are still content to play record-collection plunderers, but instead of ripping what they can from the '60s, they spend much of the album as twenty-first-century stand-ins for Grand Funk Railroad, Blue Oyster Cult and Three Dog Night, playing big, limp, calculated rock 'n’ roll.
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Consolers is a labored album, the product of much studio tinkering and a desperate need for the band to prove themselves as a “serious” outfit.
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Great fun to record, no doubt, and probably great live, but an annoying conceit on record.
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But too often, the Raconteurs' love of twisty, monolithic rock gives way to bombast that teeters between homage and parody.
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Consolers of the Lonely is often grotesquely overblown despite moments of genuine excitement.
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Under The RadarMost of the album is in second person, and it’s another way that Consolers of the Lonely isolates the audience. The lonely are far from consoled; they’re made to feel uninvited to a fantastic party. [Summer 2008]
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What keeps Consolers of the Lonely from being an outright shit affair is, predictably, the assembled chops of its musicians, a group never so much fussy as amicable, wide-eyed about the righteous licks and insensitive tempo shifts they solder together so tightly.
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It’s a much more musically diverse album than the Raconteurs have done before, but there are many more misses than hits among these 14 tracks.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 105 out of 117
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Mixed: 9 out of 117
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Negative: 3 out of 117
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Nov 9, 2012
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Apr 10, 2012
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Feb 14, 2012