The Raconteurs 10/1/08

I've been patiently waiting since September 20th, 2006 for their return.  They must have known because they blew my eyelids back by opening with my two favorite songs off of the new album, Consolers of the Lonely:  the song "Consoler of the Lonely" and "Hold Up."  Brendan Benson took over most of the singing as the awe inspiring Jack White was having throat problems, what with this being the last show of the tour.  No problem, he was well up to the task.  JW got off to a rocky start when he had to switch out his guitar for an acoustic during the first tune, and I will say that there seemed to be a lot more communication on stage than I can remember seeing from other performances which led me to believe that the throat problem was unexpected.  I was happy to see bassist Jack Lawrence acting less like a statue and more like a rock star, thrashing his head with his jet black hair that couldn't be straighter, even if it were defining the shortest distance between two points.  They had a nice intermingling of songs from their first album with the new.  Some of which I had almost forgotten about since I've been OD-ing on COTL.  They ended the first set with the murky "Blue Veins" and started the encore (as Brendan Benson rode out on his BMX bike) with their first hit "Steady as She Goes."  They asked the female half of the the opening band, The Kills, to come up and help the ailing Jack White to sing which proved to be a mistake.  She couldn't have missed more queues and lyrics if she had been bribed.  She and White were kind of play pushing each other around during the song but maybe towards the end he was pushing her out of frustration.  Who the Hell could blame him???  The Kills (who are in desperate need of a drummer instead of pre-recorded beats) did slightly impress me with their stage presence.  I'll admit, I kinda dug their swagger.  They both played guitar, they both used their body to emphasize key points in their songs, and the male half of the duo had a specter way of gliding across the stage that had to be all ankles.  Anyway, after shooing her off stage, The Racs played  "Broken Boy Soldiers" and ended with the lyrically genius murder ballad "Carolina Drama."  Describing the boyfriend in this song as "a triple loser with some blue tattoos that were given to him when he was young, and a drunk temper that was easy to lose, thank God he didn't own a gun" is, to me, incredibly creative.  The "blue tattoos..." line is a sympathetically poetic way of saying he was physically abused as a child; the blue tattoos being a metaphor for bruises that he will never forget and have the permanence of being inked even after they healed, in my opinion.  JW makes me feel almost sorry for the antagonist of this darkly written folk song.  If that is the intended translation, Mr. White must not sleep well with all the creativity gushing from his soul like Niagara Falls.  Have I mentioned I'm a huge fan???