The Raconteurs performed back-to-back nights on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to celebrate the release of Help Us Stranger, their first album in 11 years. During their first night, the band performed the album standout “Help Me Stranger,” with Jack White and Brendan Benson doubling up on vocals.
Later in the night, the band played their single “Bored and Razed,” which premiered earlier this month on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio show. Dressed in a Cramps T-shirt and a slick pair of red sneakers (sadly no 1940s street urchin attire today!), White opened with a searing guitar solo before diving into the track’s blown-out vocals.
If that weren’t enough, the band trekked out to Brooklyn later that night for a six-song set at Rough Trade’s Williamsburg location. Billed as a record release show for their new album, White and co. performed a brief medley of songs including “Bored and Razed,” Live a Lie,” “Only Child,” “Don’t Bother Me,” “Sunday Driver,” and “Help Me Stranger,” as Rolling Stone points out. Fan-shot footage of the performance shows the band playing from the venue’s balcony, rather than the stage. “It’s a tight squeeze up here and I just noticed the big fuckin’ stage over here,” Benson joked before diving into “Born and Razed.”
Help Us Stranger marks the followup to Consolers of the Lonely, the band’s 2008 sophomore LP. Last year, White’s label Third Man Records released a deluxe reissue of the album through the Third Man Vault series. The reissue included two new songs, and was released for the album’s 10th anniversary. Watch the band’s Colbert and Rough Trade performance below.
