Help Us Stranger The Raconteurs

• 1Bored and Razed03:35
• 2Help Me Stranger03:36
• 3Only Child03:41
• 4Don't Bother Me02:54
• 5Shine The Light On Me03:28
• 6Somedays (I Don't Feel Like Trying)04:06
• 7Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness)02:25
• 8Sunday Driver03:39
• 9Now That You're Gone04:01
• 10Live A Lie02:21
• 11What's Yours Is Mine02:49
• 12Thoughts And Prayers04:42
• Total Runtime41:17

Info for Help Us Stranger

The Raconteurs – Jack White, Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence, and Patrick Keeler – have announced the release of their long-awaited new album, HELP US STRANGER, which is the GRAMMY Award- winning rock band’s third studio LP and first new album in more than a decade.

Out on Friday, June 21, HELP US STRANGER sees the mighty combo reassembled, stronger and perhaps even more vital than ever before as they continue to push rock ‘n’ roll forward into its future, bonding prodigious riffs, blues power, sinewy psychedelia, Detroit funk, and Nashville soul via Benson and White’s uncompromising songcraft and the band’s steadfast musical muscle. With HELP US STRANGER, The Raconteurs have returned right when they are needed most, unified and invigorated with boundless ambition, infinite energy and a collectivist spirit operating at the peak of its considerable powers, once again creating a sound and fury only possible when all four of its members come together.

White and Benson wrote all the songs on HELP US STRANGER except one cover, “Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness),” which was written by Donovan. Recorded at Third Man Studio in Nashville, TN, the album was produced by The Raconteurs and engineered by Joshua V. Smith. Longtime friends and musical collaborators helped make HELP US STRANGER, including keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita (The Dead Weather, Queens of the Stone Age) and Lillie Mae Rische and her sister Scarlett Rische. The album was mixed by Vance Powell and The Raconteurs at Blackbird Studios in Nashville.

"Reconvening after a decade's absence, the Raconteurs resemble nothing less than a guild of craftsman united by taste and work ethic on their third album, Help Us Stranger. Ever since their debut, the quartet displayed a shared love for the rock and pop made before the advent of MTV, and while they've never abandoned an aesthetic steeped in FM radio, they've gotten livelier with each passing LP. Which isn't to say Help Us Stranger is a slack, loose affair. One of its considerable pleasures his how Brendan Benson encourages Jack White to stick to a strict outline and color within the lines, trends the latter largely abandoned on his willfully obtuse 2018 album Boarding House Reach. There are jokes and asides peppered throughout Help Us Stranger -- the best of these is an intentional skip at the start of the title track, the kind of thing that will drive vinyl freaks batty upon the initial listen -- but the album is distinguished by its velocity, a momentum delivered as much through writing as it is through performance. Whether they're stitching together individual ideas or writing in tandem, Benson and White are full collaborators, honing their hooks and melodies so they're gleamingly lean, then they dress up these handsome bones with squalls of guitar, vintage synths, campfire acoustics, ghostly piano, gypsy violin, and thundering rhythms. On the surface, the sound may seem as retro as the record's tight 42-minute running time, but that's where the Raconteurs' dedication to craft comes into play. The group intentionally works with old tools so they can fit within an album-rock tradition, yet they have little interest in re-creating the past. Apart from a hypercharged cover of Donovan's "Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)," none of the songs bear hallmarks of another time; the tunes teem with modern-day ennui, right down to White's gripes about cell phones. Despite this contemporary flair, what keeps Help Us Stranger lively is how the Raconteurs blend and mix barbed pop and blues skronk so their classicism seems fresh, not stale." (Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG)

Brendan Benson, vocals, guitar, keyboards, organ, piano
Patrick Keeler, drums, percussion
Jack Lawrence, bass, banjo, backing vocals
Jack White, vocals, guitar, keyboards, organ, piano, stylophone, mandolin

The Raconteurs
In the mid-2000s, Jack White was sitting on top of the rock world. His band, The White Stripes, were among the biggest breakout acts of the 21st century, having graduated from the Detroit garage-punk underground to international festival-headliner status in just a few short years. But in the downtime following the release of the Stripes' 2005 album, Get Behind Me Satan, White hunkered down in a home studio to work on a fresh batch of tunes with critically acclaimed, if commercially unheralded, singer/songwriter Brendan Benson. With the recruitment of Greenhornes bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler, the private project became a proper group. On their Grammy-nominated 2006 debut, Broken Boy Soldiers, The Raconteurs showed themselves to be a more eclectic outfit than their garage/punk pedigree suggested, as they bounded between the power-pop of "Steady, As She Goes" and the spaghetti-western cavalry charge of the title track. The swiftly recorded 2008 follow-up, Consolers of the Lonely, beefed up their guitar riffs alongside rootsy fiddles and brass. After touring behind that record, The Raconteurs went silent. For a while they seemed destined to go down as a fleeting pit stop en route to White's other burgeoning band, The Dead Weather, and his flourishing solo career, but after a decade-long hiatus, The Raconteurs resurfaced in 2019 with their third album, Help Us Stranger.

This album contains no booklet.