The Raconteurs put a full 2006 Irving Plaza recording on streaming on November 6, alongside their debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers. It’s part of the record’s 20th anniversary. A green vinyl pressing is due in December, and an earlier announcement covers a separate three-LP archive set. All three releases carry the debut’s name. The track lists give each one a different reason to exist.

The four members of The Raconteurs stand together in an early publicity portrait.
The Raconteurs in an early publicity photograph by Autumn de Wilde.

Start with “Level.” It’s sixth on the studio album, but it opens the April 7, 2006 show in New York. “Intimate Secretary” comes next, and “Steady, As She Goes” waits until fourth. The live set gets through all ten songs from the debut. By moving the album’s opening single back three places, it gives anyone who knows the record by heart a different way into those same songs.

The Irving Plaza disc runs to 14 tracks. Alongside the album songs sit “Five on the Five” and covers associated with Love, David Bowie and the Flamin’ Groovies. An edited version of the concert appeared on vinyl in Third Man’s Vault #30. The digital release restores three encore performances, including “Blue Veins.” On the studio album that song closes the record. In New York it leads into a final cover, “Headin’ for the Texas Border.”

There’s a second early set on the anniversary’s three-LP Vault #70 package. It comes from Liverpool on March 20, 18 days before Irving Plaza. Both shows open with the same five songs in the same order. The Liverpool set also has “Five on the Five” and two of the same covers. The New York recording adds “It Ain’t Easy” to that list. For a listener following how the band assembled its first live show, the common opening is as revealing as the one song that changes.

Vault #70 also gathers demos and alternate studio takes, for 23 tracks across the package. That includes an early “Steady, As She Goes” demo that has circulated officially before and a different studio take of “Blue Veins.” The December green LP, by contrast, carries the ten studio tracks in their original order. Third Man lists December 11 for that pressing, with select shops getting it December 18.

The immediate addition for anyone who already owns the debut is the New York concert. Put “Level” on first and the live disc will walk you back into an album you might normally start with “Steady, As She Goes.” That change in order comes from the band’s 2006 set, about five weeks before the record arrived in May.