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While other big-draw names in music have rebelled against the major-label machine recently by releasing their music independently just to prove (maybe even to themselves) that they can (Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are the biggest names to do so), Raconteurs masterminds Jack White and Brendan Benson chose to flex their muscles and throw their weight around a little in a totally different way: two weeks before its ultimate release, the duo shipped their side project’s new a lbum, Consolers Of the Lonely, to Warner Brothers with the understa nding that no changes would be made a nd no considerations for such profess ional criticism would be entertained under any circumstances. Raconteurs&r squo; label didn’t balk at the la ck of control and did not argue, they s imply did as they were instructed.

It’s easy to understand why there was no fight ins tigated on those terms. Consolers of the Lonely is, without quest ion, White and Benson’s crowning musical achievement; nothing the pair has done separately in other bands or together even comes close to this vin tage, retro-rock masterpiece. Fo r Consolers’ fourteen tracks, R aconteurs have taken pages from the rock royalty that found fame in the 70s&mda sh;as well as, of course, The Beatles& mdash;and overlapped them with an honest-to-god musical enthusiast&rsq uo;s sense of construction. In other words, White and Benson were born and raised upon the likes of T. Rex, Bob Dyl an, The Band, Ted Nugent and Th e Beatles, and you can tell they still love them but, critically, they saw t he opportunities those bands originall y missed and so they’ve taken the liberty of “fixing” them here to produce a bombastic record fo r all time.

The sucker pu nch that the band lays on listeners righ t off is that they wear each of those s ounds on their sleeve as they go an d make them all readily recogniza ble in order to point the way. In &ldq uo;Old Enough,” for example, Racon teurs crossbreed CSNY’s multi-har mony vocal writing and “Whatcha g onna do about it” urgency with t he band’s roots-inspired and folk sy songwriting, which lets the Work ingman’s Dead vibes hang in the background of that and the band throws some Steppenwolf-styled vin tage keyboard washes out front for goo d measure. Elsewhere, the ghosts of Motor City Mania color the title trac k, Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles& rsquo; pop-filled disillusionment couple d with Cheap Trick’s love of the same sound and their ability to infl ate it and make it sound even big ger are the hooks laced into &ldqu o;You Don’t Understand Me,” and the German cabaret that inspire d Bowie for three albums ba ck when informs “The Switch and the Spur” before the b and runs back to do it all again.

No wonder the image on the back c over of Consolers of the Lonely< /em> features Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence clutching a handful of .45s& mdash;it removes any doubt of w hat the band was listening to while the members were writing this.

With so many sounds being absorb ed and spat back, it’d be easy to think that The Raconteurs were grasp ing at straws and trying to recreate t he magic of their debut, but the tr uth is that, by incorporating older, established and classic styles int o their own all-star brew of fine songwr iting, they’ve far surpassed it. Consolers of the Lonely is a landmark record for White, Benson an d The Raconteurs. They’ve s et the bar incredibly high for future r eleases with Consolers but, at the same time, express a staggering amount of talent and versatility that make s it perfectly reasonable to believ e that they could not only do it again, but they can do better too. Listening t o this album, you know the sky&r squo;s the limit as far as what this ban d is capable of.

Con solers of th e Lonely is out now on Third Man/Wa rner.

More on The Raconte urs here: www.therac onteurs.com