Dead Weather - Horehound

Jack White suddenly realized that his voice had been pushed to the breaking point. In the last decade, he has released an album every year for the last eight years. There were six White Stripes records and two albums by The Raconteurs. He had also been in three movies and recorded a James Bond theme with Alicia Keys.

So, he invited The Kills' Alison Mosshart on stage to pull some vocal duties for The Raconteurs in his place. It turned out to be a stroke of genius. Mosshart's voice echoes White's to the point of being flat-out eerie. Assuming the drummer's chair, White isn't flashy behind the kit. But, the fury of his playing is like listening to a man who has been rendered mute trying to express himself through sound. Having said this, the music crackles and explodes with a tension on loan from some of the best film noir. Horehound is a sleazy, creeping blues ride that has White, Mosshart, Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita riding straight out of the grave and breaking their whips on the horse's ass.

"60 Feet Tall" opens the album with minimalist bent-string blues and echoing rim shots as Mosshart intones, "You're so cold and dangerous, I can't leave you be". As the band lurches in, Mosshart invokes the spirit of PJ Harvey as she spits her lyrics at the microphone, making each syllable stick to your skin. Similarly, "Hang You From The Heavens" is a churning neo-garage wailer that has Mosshart's voice erupting as a bundle of hiss, cooing the molten promise, "I like to grab you by the hair, and drag you to the devil".

Lust?

Sure, if that is what you want to call it. But, at the end of this love scene, someone is either dead or waking up...chained to a chair...in a room with no windows.

"Treat Me Like Your Mother" is a warped Oedipal love-note that is spot-welded to a synthesizer riff dancing its way over a Zeppelin-esque shuffle. The affair gets even darker on "Bone House" when Mosshart admits "I put your heart in a vault, that's how I get what I want."

One of the more electrifying moments on Horehound is the duet between Mosshart and White on "Rocking Horse". The guitars shimmer as Mosshart and White moan and scream their way through lyrics like, "I wrote a nasty letter and I sent it to the Lord. I said, 'Don't you dare come and bother me no more." It's a sentiment that calls to mind some of the masters of the blues. Its the sound of two people who realize that no matter how far they run, the evil they have perpetrated will only catch up to them. Mosshart and White play their parts at the top of their lungs.

The album succeeds on many levels because the spirit of the proceedings is so "right-on". It's an album that sounds haunted, but never campy. The songs are dangerous, dark and achieve a certain masterful stroke of storytelling. It makes you hope that there will be a second album by Dead Weather.

Then you find yourself wondering, "What will Jack White do next?"
Is there anything he can't do?

But you will hit replay on Horehound quite a few times before an answer comes to you.

(This album is set for release on July 14, 2009)