It begins looking more or less, as Jack White has argued ad nauseam, like a democracy. White, Brendan Benson and Little Jack Lawrence are clustered around Patrick Keeler’s drum riser, smartly waistcoated, backs to the audience, flexing their metaphorical rock muscles. They’re playing the title track from “Consolers Of The Lonely”, and the way the song switches back and forth between White and Benson, the way their vocals are tracked by harmonies from Lawrence and Mark Watrous, the new keyboards and fiddle player, the power-packed tightness of it all is overwhelming. As this staggeringly good gig progresses, however, something significant and, perhaps, fairly inevitable seems to happen: The Raconteurs are revealed not just as a genuinely great band, but also, emphatically, Jack’s band. The last time I saw them was their first British gig, I think, just before the release of “Broken Boy Soldiers”. They were excellent, of course, but one of the fascinating things was Jack White’s studied discretion. The grand rock theatrics we’d come to expect from years of White Stripes gigs had been toned right down, the better to emphasise that, here, he was just one of the guys. Not any more. I don’t mean to take anything away from Brendan Benson, who’s definitely in fine form here: his showcases, “The Switch And The Spur” and “Many Shades Of Black”, are quite marvellous, for a start. But even then, I find myself irresistibly drawn to White: at the centre of it all; subtly directing affairs with the odd cursory nod of the head towards Keeler; taking all the solos. I could be getting this wrong, but I seem to remember Benson taking the lead vocal on “Steady, As She Goes” originally. Tonight, it becomes White’s song, with a new edge and anger roughing up the mellifluous powerpop. It’s a transformation in keeping with the shift from “Broken Boy Soldiers” to “Consolers Of The Lonely”, of course, as The Raconteurs have so keenly embraced the possibilities of being a grandiose rock band. Even the racey little punk songs like “Hold Up” and “Salute Your Solution”, so notionally close in spirit to old White Stripes, have a pomp and complexity that could be seen as self-indulgent, but actually comes across as totally bracing. What’s apparent, after the mild controversy around the Raconteurs’ press-spurning release scam, is that the songs on “Consolers Of The Lonely” are among the best that White has been involved in. White’s first lead comes with “You Don’t Understand Me”, a fervid expansion on those wounded, indignant piano ballads he’s been finessing over the years in the company of Meg. This time, though, without the vigorous constrictions of The White Stripes, his penchant for florid melodrama can really flourish. On “Top Yourself” and the final encore, the mighty Dylanish “Carolina Drama”, his acoustic strumming is so intense as to be intimidatory, tracked by Benson’s attentive slide. His solos are brittle and explosive, tapping into the electric blues tradition as much as he’s ever done before: there’s even a suitably priapic version of “Little Red Rooster” in the encores. And then there’s “Your Blue Veins”, the last song of the main set, and one which has grown into the Raconteurs’ own “Dazed And Confused”. I’ve seen countless White Stripes shows in the past seven years or so, but I’ve rarely seen White play a more precise and free, high and wild solo as good as this one. His takeover of The Raconteurs, at least in terms of taking the spotlight, is now necessary and complete. On the way out, I hear two guys talking about the show, and one of them saying, in the least hyperbolic terms imaginable, how no-one has played guitar like that since Hendrix. It’s a big claim, and one which I imagine Jimmy Page might have issues with, for a start. But then I can’t remember, in just over two decades of going to gigs, any guitarist I’ve seen regularly who has taken the rudiments of blues playing (I’m excluding people like Thurston Moore and Kevin Shields here; “The Coral Sea” has finally arrived and is playing incongruously as I write, incidentally. More about that next week) and refreshed it so utterly, made the great tradition seem so exhilarating. Anyone else there?

I suspect I’ve banged on about Howlin Rain so often now that my admiration for the band is reaching mildly stalkerish levels. Last night’s show at the Scala, though, was a big leap on from this one that I frothed over a few months ago. Head over to Wild Mercury Sound to read the rest of this one. . .

I suspect I’ve banged on about Howlin Rain so often now that my admiration for the band is reaching mildly stalkerish levels. Last night’s show at the Scala, though, was a big leap on from this one that I frothed over a few months ago. It was good to see them play in front of a bigger crowd, for a start (in this case they were supporting the Meat Puppets, quaintly enough) rather than headlining to a handful of devotees. I think they’ve got a big tour coming up in the States as guests of The Black Crowes, which’ll hopefully get their wonderful music across to a much wider constituency. Not that the Crowes’ fans will necessarily be able to handle Howlin Rain, even if Ethan Miller is drawing from the same wellspring of ‘70s rock as the Robinson brothers. The thing is, Miller invests everything he does with such puppyish, punkish exuberance that his songs never quite stick to classic archetypes. His bandmates are coping better at keeping up with him here, though, especially the mighty Joel Robinow on organ, and the songs from “Magnificent Fiend” are growing new heft and subtlety as a result of being jammed out every night on tour. Even in his Comets On Fire incarnation, it’s hard to remember a better show I’ve seen Ethan play. Wooden Shjips were terrific, too. A quartet from San Francisco, I must admit I’ve slept on their debut album a little, after initially recommending their Myspace sometime last year. I’d remembered them as being heavily indebted to Spacemen 3, maybe a little shoey, but happily, their resemblance to the Spacemen is because they draw so richly on the same motherlode of records. I guess there’s a slight problem here in that they’re one of those bands whose influences are so shamelessly foregrounded: The Doors, Suicide, Neu!, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges. But it’s the way they streamline them all into a kind of rapturous, linear psych that’s so impressive. There’s a collision of sorts between The Exploding Plastic Inevitable and The Family Dog in the way these doggedly hypnotic organ grooves are kept company by a surprisingly jaunty, super-tight rhythm section, then punctuated by Erik Johnson’s reverb-drenched murmurs and his great, stunned, fuzz-heavy guitar solos. Serendipitously, I discovered a new singles comp by them – “Vol 1” – in my post this morning, which is playing as I write. Specifically, “SOL ‘07” is playing, one of the highlights of last night’s show, a needly, insistent head-nodder that stretches out for some ten minutes and features wild flurries of trumpet from the bassist Dusty Jermier. Very handy band, I think. And the organist looks a bit like Bill Clinton if he’d inhaled, or maybe it was just the lights in my eyes from the mirrorball. . .