Don’t let Jack White’s predilection for heavy retro blues and vintage guitars fool you. Always embroiled in hype, buzz, gimmick and genius rock, the White Stripes’ leader may be rock ’n’ roll’s quintessential modern man. Even when he aims to duck the spotlight, he crashes right into it.
On March 17, White and the members of his other band, the Raconteurs - fellow frontman Brendan Benson, bassist “Little” Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler - announced they were releasing their second album, “Consolers of the Lonely,” in eight days. They weren’t sending advance copies to Rolling Stone to review or to MTV to stream; and they weren’t talking to the media.
Instead, the Raconteurs, who play the Bank of America Pavilion tomorrow, would be releasing “Consolers” in digital, CD and vinyl formats on March 25 so the album, according to a band Web posting, wouldn’t “be defined by it’s (sic) first weeks (sic) sales, pre-release promotion, or by someone defining it FOR YOU before you get to hear it.”
“I’m so tired of all the fears in the industry,” White said last week from a Washington, D.C., tour stop. “The fears of first-week sales or of free, leaked music, or music stores closing, or of the whole music industry collapsing. The White Stripes have been dealing with all these fears ever since we came above ground in 2002. I just wish whatever everyone’s so afraid of would happen already.”
The release strategy behind “Consolers” was an attempt to challenge the industry’s worries. But it fell right into them when it popped up on iTunes and spread across the Web four days earlier than planned.
“Somehow a glitch put the album up on iTunes and like 40 copies got sold,” White said. “But I’m still glad we did it.
“All it was about was getting it to the fans in every format at once,” he said. “And, on a selfish note, I’m also tired about the fears over how to release something these days. You have to do extra tracks for iTunes and do an exclusive AOL session and something for MySpace [website]. I don’t have time for all that in my life.”
But like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, whose latest albums also bucked traditional release trends, the subversion became the story, while the actual music was demoted to sidebar status. Which is a real shame in the Raconteurs’ case. “Consolers” is a glorious slab of brand new classic rock imbued with punk fervor.
“The first record was very haphazard and done off the cuff,” White’s hometown Detroit buddy Benson said, grabbing the phone from White. “We had to develop a chemistry and rapport on the first tour. That was the true beginnings of the band.”
Unlike their rushed first album, which is made up of the first 10 songs Benson and White wrote together, “Consolers” was culled from more than 20 songs written and arranged over two years. The outcome is something sprawling and dynamic, with heavy metal peaks and folk valleys found in the big rock of “Who’s Next” and Led Zeppelin’s “Zoso.”
“It’s kind of a powerhouse,” Benson said. “No one in this band strives to be normal. We’re all trying to poke out. The end result is a bigger-sounding thing than most.”
And it’s music that doesn’t need hype, buzz or gimmick to sell it.
“A musician is expected to be a salesman these days,” White said. “But I don’t want to be a salesman.”
Or, as he sings on “Hold Up”: “Had enough of these modern times/About to drive me out of my mind.”
The Raconteurs, with the Black Lips, tomorrow at the Bank of America Pavilion. Tickets: $25-$35; 617-728-1600.
