One of the most intriguing things about The Raconteurs was hearing how Jack White's incendiary blues workouts would tally with Brendan Benson's more sedate pop/folk strummings. Broken Boy Soldiers, while not being quite the work of earth-shattering importance that we thought it may be, showed that the two Detroit songwriters gelled very nicely indeed.
Hands is a typical Raconteurs track - starting off with a mighty guitar riff that threatens to tear out the speakers, it soon settles down into a Beatles-like folksy anthem. Benson takes lead vocals, but White's guitar work means that there's always a tension there that stops the track becoming too comfortable.
It may lack the immediacy of Steady As She Goes, or indeed the head-turning minimal brilliance of the best of the White Stripes, but overall Hands is proof that the much maligned notion of a supergroup can be a very good thing.
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