Jack White doesn’t hate the Internet. He admires it, actually.
But as much as the indie-rock icon is in awe of the online realm, he’s also wary of the endless expanse that is home to sites such as YouTube and Kazaa – and not for the reasons you might think.
“I’ve gotten critiqued about being against the Internet in the past,” White said in a telephone interview earlier this week, “but look at it from our perspective. If we make a video, somebody from the set posts photos that night and kills the surprise. If we play a new song live, they’ll just compare the album version to what they heard on YouTube months before.”
Griping about kids stealing music is so 2000 – only it wasn’t too much a concern for White, who that year released The White Stripes’ second album, “De Stijl,” while Metallica and Dr. Dre were condemning their Napster-obsessed fans.
A lot has changed since then. The White Stripes hit the mainstream a year later with “White Blood Cells,” and now White is touring with his new band, The Raconteurs, a more straightforward power-chord rock band that kicks off its North American tour Sunday in Denver at the Fillmore Auditorium.
The Raconteurs – White, singer-songwriter Brendan Benson and The Greenhornes’ Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence – are trying to keep their songs off fans’ iPods until they’re formally released, an impossibility in an age where everyone snaps audio grabs with their cellphones and records video on digital cameras the size of an Altoids tin.
“You have to imagine a painter unveiling half his painting at an art gallery,” White said. “That’s why I think the Internet is combative to creative people. It helps everybody in their everyday life. It’s a labor-saving device. It’s a new way of communicating. But it can also destroy (an artist’s rights).”
Added Benson, who was also on the line: “What Jack says is very true. It’s detrimental to the creative process.”
As White and Benson bantered back and forth, their shared history was obvious. The two musicians have known each other for years, as their Detroit rock club roots entwined more than once.
When they announced the formation of The Raconteurs late last year, they declared the band was “not a side project.” And while the group’s 10-track album, “Broken Boy Soldiers,” hinted at their seriousness, this tour, which ends Sept. 29 in Montreal, is the proof of their shared intent.
The Raconteurs embrace pop harmony and fuzzed-out guitar hooks, flirting with the psychedelic and singer-songwriter vibes of the ’60s and ’70s as much as they do ’90s alt-rock.
The band-making process was handled in fast fashion. After years of talking about it, White and Benson finally came together a year ago in Benson’s attic on the east side of Detroit. (Benson has since moved to Nashville, where White now also resides.) They wrote 10 songs in one week and ran with those, releasing them in May on V2, the label home to The White Stripes and Benson’s solo recordings.
Benson said the biggest surprise of the venture was that it actually happened: “I realized that there was so much respect and admiration between us that it made it possible.” White was struck by the ease of the process.
“I was finally writing songs with another human being,” White said. “This was the first time I’ve ever written with another person (other than Meg White), and I wasn’t surprised it went so well – I knew I was going to like whatever was going to happen. But I was surprised with how quickly we were writing songs, how quickly we came up with 10 songs.”
White views The Raconteurs as a release from the self-imposed strictures of The White Stripes.
“What I get out of working with Meg is completely different, trapping myself in a box,” White said. “With this band, I don’t have any of those constrictions – from songwriting to aesthetic presentation, all of that is a complete open book.”
But his need for experimentation and artistic discipline remain. After he and Benson wrote 10 songs, “We stopped ourselves there,” White said, “thinking, ‘This is coming too easily. Let’s just focus on these.”‘
So while most bands write twice as many songs as they’ll need and whittle the results down, The Raconteurs’ creative bravado is a crucible of talent and execution.
Reviews have been mixed. “Broken Boy Soldiers” is clearly Benson’s record more than White’s, but the hurried conditions behind the recording are obvious. Songs such as “Hands” and “Yellow Sun” shine on even brighter than the single “Steady as She Goes.” But given the artists’ previous outings, the album is spotty and often haphazard.
This should make Sunday’s show all the more interesting. The band has only about 20 shows under its belt, White indicated, and every song has already mutated into a different incarnation from the recorded version – a natural result of the hasty recording.
“On tour, we’re discovering what this band is going to end up being,” he said. “Unfortunately we’re going to find that out in front of thousands of people.”
“Broken Boy Soldiers” checks in at under 34 minutes, but White and Benson said most of the songs have more than doubled in length. They’re also playing select covers and a new track, “Five on the Five,” but other than that, they’re declining to play any more new songs.
“Songs change from night to night, and people will become accustomed to one version and invariably not like the final version,” Benson said. “That’s not the way I think things should be. There’s an unveiling to it all.
“I remember waiting for a record from my favorite bands, and it was so exciting and great to hear it. That’s the way things should be.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
| The Raconteurs
ROCK|Fillmore Auditorium, 8 p.m. Sunday with Kelley Stoltz opening|
$25.25-$30|ticketmaster.com, 303-830-8497
