So why is The Raconteurs’ Broken Boy Soldiers on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
This was one of those albums that I had a particularly challenging time figuring out what to do with in terms of placing it on this wacko best 1,000 albums ever project thing that I somehow assigned to myself during the bleakest stretches of the pandemic way back in late 2020.
I knew I liked Broken Boy Soldiers, sure, but the question was how much did I like it, really? Released in 2006 as the first album from this side project-meets-super group collaboration between Jack White, Brendan Benson, and members of The Greenhornes (see: Dual Mono, #604 of best 1,000 albums ever), my initial take on Broken Boy Soldiers was that the single, “Steady As She Goes,” was great Jack White-y garage punk but the rest of the album was mostly just fine, passable, not particularly engaging.
So that was one thing, and then I naturally if unfairly compared Broken Boy Soldiers to The Raconteurs’ follow up release from 2008, Consolers of the Lonely, which I consider to be an astonishing achievement (spoiler: you’ll be seeing it down the line on this here ye olde best 1,000 albums ever thing).
But then the more time I spent on the non-“Steady As She Goes” parts of Broken Boy Soldiers, the more I dug it, and the more rewarding the album became as a whole.
It was “Store Bought Bones” that became my breakthrough to the rest of the album. Its dark, garage/freaky glam vibe is akin to some of The Dead Weather’s best output (which is of course yet another Jack White-related project) – that band took me some time to get on the same frequency with as well with some of its stuff, as an aside.
But whereas The Dead Weather can get a bit lost in that dark and strange terrain at times, Broken Boy Soldiers then turns around and gives us the delightfully cheerful jangle pop jam of “Yellow Sun,” which my favorite song on the album just at this moment.
And songs such as “Together” get better and better the more I spend time with it, in this case a quiet, yearning, and pretty number that veers dangerously close to being pure pop.
Some stats & info about The Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldiers
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Alternative Rock, Garage Rock Revival
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 3.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Broken Boy Soldiers released? 2006
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #465 out of 1,000
The Raconteurs’ Broken Boy Soldiers on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from The Raconteurs’ Broken Boy Soldiers that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Find yourself a girl and settle down, live a simple life in a quiet town. Steady as she goes.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.