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The Tulsa shows are blistering high energy with some covers and medleys sprinkled into the Raconteur mix. Some of my favorites include the little infusion of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” (with an endearing false-start) into “Top Yourself” from the 2008 Consolers of the Lonely and the songs “Gloria” and “I Want Candy” into “Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)” from the 2019 Help Us Stranger LP. Other top picks are “Help Me Stranger,” “Sunday Driver,” “Only Child” (all from Help Us Stranger), the frenetic and borderline bonkers “Salute Your Solution” (from Consolers) and “Steady As She Goes” (from the 2006 album Broken Boy Soldiers).

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Both tracks on the 7″ single, “Stayed Up Last Night” and “Shadow of Grief,” are straight-up first-era garage rockers, with a sound like early Stones and the Kinks. Both are a great mix of bright, jangly blues and rocking rhythm; “Shadow of Grief” has that classic 60’s organ sound and some country twang while “Stayed Up Last Night” has some killer blues harmonica.

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As with most Vault subscription packages, this one comes loaded with a bunch of extras: four large and slick photos of the band members, a “R” insignia embroidered patch (“for your rocker jean jacket”), four silver stickers of artwork from the album and a 45″ single of two new Raconteur songs, “Now That You’re Gone” and “Sunday Driver” (which I’ll review in another post).

When the album first dropped in 2008, it was the band’s second LP and, mostly, a complete surprise to the public (though it was accidentally leaked a little early on iTunes) as the band had only finished recording it a couple of weeks prior to its release. It hit #7 in the US and #8 in the UK, receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album and winning the Best Engineered Non-Classical album category. Consolers of the Lonely is big music on a big double album: power chords and riffs, horns, organ, piano, strings, a banjo, stylophone and clavinet for goodness’ sake. An album Allmusic describes as a “bubbling blend of bizarro blues, rustic progressive rock, fractured pop, and bludgeoning guitars.” Some of my favorite tracks have pretty much all of those things – “The Switch and the Spur,” “Hold Up,” “Attention” and the Zeppelin-esque “These Stones Will Shout.”  I also really like the laid-back vibe of the slide-guitar heavy “Top Yourself.” I’m not as crazy about the country-twinged and twanged, old-time saloony “Pull This Blanket Off” and the 80′s hair-metal-power-ballad-meets-Queen-rock-opera “Rich Kid Blues” is both awesome and weird and I can’t decide if I love it or not. The Raconteurs released four singles from Consolers of the Lonely. The first they released the same day as the album, “Salute Your Solution” which went to #4 on Billboard’s Rock Songs chart. The second single was “Many Shades of Black” which went to #37 on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart and had a version performed by Adele. The last two singles, “Old Enough” and “Consoler of the Lonely” did not chart (at least I don’t think so).

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There are two different videos for “Steady, As She Goes.” The first one has kind of grainy footage with 60′s 8mm lighting of the band with farm animals and a creepy abandoned farmhouse. The second video features Paul Reubens as an over-the-top villain rigging a soap box race, with the band members as the racers, drummer Patrick Keeler keeping time on the drums the whole race, even after he careens over a cliff.

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