Kevin Bronson on June 28th, 2019

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Until today, the Raconteurs hadn’t released an album since the spring of 2008, so Thursday night’s surprise show in Los Angeles felt like a prodigal son returning to his neighborhood bar to meet up with old buds.

The pop-up show, a benefit for GSA network, was at the gritty Mid-City club Catch One in a hazy room called the Underground. It followed two similar surprise shows last week in New York where the all-star quartet — Jack White, Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler — previewed their third full-length “Help Us Stranger.”

Even stuffed as the room was with industry types and other musicians of varying celebrity, the 75-minute show was old-school: high-spirited, high-volume and high-velocity — especially when White went into a rat-a-tat-tat soliloquy about supporting artists. They played the new album, saving highlight “Sunday Driver” for the encore, with fortysomethings White and Benson doing their best teenager. By the time they finished with “Steady, As She Goes,” the spirit of reunion between band and audience was in full force.

Setlist: Bored and Razed, Don’t Bother Me, Old Enough, You Don’t Understand Me, Level, Somedays (I Don’t Feel Like Trying), Broken Boy Soldier, Help Me Stranger, Only Child, Hands. Encore: Consoler of the Lonely, Sunday Driver, Now That You’re Gone, What’s Yours Is Mine, Salute Your Solution, Steady As She Goes

Photos by Matt Cowan

||| Live: The Raconteurs play the Greek Theatre on July 26. Tickets.

||| Also: Stream “Help us Stranger” in its entirety