TMR-148
Third Man Records
7"
Released: 2012 (Announced Sep 4 2012)
This is a great Raconteurs 7" from Vault Package 12. Both songs didn't end up not on the bands album to be: Consolers of the lonely from 2008.
The A-side is "Open your eyes", which according to the TMR announcement on September 4 2012, at the time Jack White is quoted saying:
’Open Your Eyes’ sounds like a hit. Seems like it could’ve been released as a single and I can’t remember why it didn’t make the album.
And it's funny they mention that because if you listen to the intro of the song I wanna bet that the first few seconds of muffled notes on a guitar and drums is exactly the same as what appears on two songs of Consolers: The end of "Old Enough" and the beginning of "The Switch and the Spur" just before someone shouts "one two" and then "The Switch" really starts. To me those 5 seconds sounds so similar to the beginning of "Open your eyes" that they almost most have to be the same. What do you think?
Here's "Open your eyes", listen from a couple of seconds in.
And here's "Old enough" set at 3:52 where the passage begins:
And here's "The Switch and the Spur":
If you combine those last seconds of "Old enough" with the first 1 second of "The Switch" until "one two" is shouted. That passage is the same as the intro to "Open your eyes". It's weird because the whole album sounds like it's recorded in one take. And the "one two" creates a silent barrier between the end of "Old Enough" and beginning of "The Switch" which is quite different.
So what happened? We can only guess. "Open your eyes" ended up on Brendan Bensons album "What kind of world" under the title "Here in the Deadlights". That record was released on April 21 2012. This vault package was announced on September 4 2012, i.e. 5 months after Brendans album release. But because of the coincidental muted notes in the beginning of the song the recording of "Open your eyes" must have been made during Consolers recording. So what does this mean? Maybe it was a Brendan song and he decided that it needed more work or wanted to keep it for later. It was Brendan's own record company that put out "What kind of world" so it couldn't have been a legal issue I guess.
Brendan's version sounds the same, but the lyrics is slightly different. Take a listen:
Ok then the B-side:
This is "You made a fool out of me" which ended up on Brendan's album "My old familiar friend" from 2009. It's one of my favorite Brendan Benson songs. His version is just so heartfelt. I got really caught up in the story of the song the first many times I listened to it. And still is. It's like Carolina Drama to me in some of ways. You're really immersed in the story and the fate of the characters of the song. Listen to it yourself (Brendan's version, I wasn't able to find any recordings of Raconteurs version on Youtube):
The Raconteurs version got a lot more going on and I think this makes it feel less authentic. It sounds like a demo although the TMR statement about it say that it's not. But it's very different from Brendans version except the piano parts, which kinds of leads the way. The Raconteurs version got all kinds of stuff going on, there's a heavy bass influence, there's what sounds like an organ of some sort, drums and even a synthesizer or something. And there's no guitar. Which is my favorite part of Brendans version. And finally, Brendan hums the song instead of singing it. Anyway, you can't like 'em all.
