Jack's big music show

Stumbled across a little piece in Rolling Stone today about one of Jack White's favorite side projects, The Raconteurs and their new album.

Jack is so damn clever, it drives me crazy. I hadn't even heard about this album, and apparently neither had no one else.

Jack White and Brendon Benson shocked everyone on Tuesday when they released the second album from their band the Raconteurs after announcing its existence just one week ago.

Brilliant! I'm sure it stems from Jack's experience with a quick-draw DJ who played all of "Icky Thump" before it was released last May.

Thankfully Rolling Stone linked to one of the first reviews, which is pretty favorable. Jack touches on a theme that I believe compels me most as a music lover -- story telling. My favorite artists tell stories, beautiful, haunting, enigmatic stories that make you listen to them over and over again until you finally sluice away the mystery in the chords. And you realize that Dave Grohl is actually singing to me when he croons, "and I wonder when I sing along with you, if everything could ever feel this real forever..."

"When you call yourself a musician," the White Stripes leader said when he teamed up with singer-songwriter Brendan Benson, bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler in 2005, "you join that family of storytellers."

And it so happened that they released their first video on the same day as the album. So smartly designed was this coup, that it makes me love Jack all that much more.