The Raconteurs have plunged fully into their chosen era of vintage rock, 1965-75, sounding less self-consciously retro than they did on their debut. While they gleefully sock out garage-rock riffs, they also allude to Neil Young, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, even the Beatles for patches of harmony in You Don't Understand Me. They get down-home and bluesy, with slide guitar and banjo, in Top Yourself. They try something like soul in Many Shades of Black, and they move toward spaghetti-Western rock with horns for a snake-bitten desert fable, The Switch and the Spur.
The Raconteurs are singing, more often than not, about desperate characters. But that desperation only makes the crunch of the music more euphoric.
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