CD Odyssey Disc 954: The Dead Weather

Thursday night Sheila and I went to see Henry Rollins’ spoken word performance. While not music, I highly recommend going if you get a chance. Rollins’ energy is infectious and his observations while highly personal touch on universal notes and make you see the world with fresh eyes.

I haven’t reviewed an album by this band for over five years. Crazy. Back then they were kind of new to me but now I find I haven’t put this on for many years. That is one of the great things about the CD Odyssey – it reminds me there is a lot of music in my collection to love, and to not forget to love it all.

Disc 954 is….Sea of Cowards

Artist: The Dead Weather

Year of Release: 2010

What’s up with the Cover? Not really a sea of cowards so much as a line of weird super heroes. From left to right we have Bird Lady, Mr. Guitar Head, Creepy Jackalope Guy and the Wooden Wizard. Not exactly the Justice League of America.

How I Came To Know It: Our friends Sherylyn and Joel introduced me to this band with their earlier album “Horehound” and I liked it so sought out more of the same.

How It Stacks Up:  I have three Dead Weather albums. I like all of them, but I’m going to put “Sea of Cowards” first, narrowly edging out “Horehound” for the top spot.

Ratings: 4 stars

“Sea of Cowards” is a case study in how to make intense, crunchy rock and roll that gets into your spine, gives it a shake and then departs, leaving you slightly rattled and loving the experience.

The Dead Weather is a collaboration of a number of famous artists: Jack White (White Stripes), Alison Mosshart (Kills), Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age) and Jack Lawrence (lots of cool bands). While this is only their second album together but their playing is so on point you would swear they’d all grown up together and had been playing music with each other for 20 years.

Like many of Jack White’s projects, this music is heavily percussive with thick reverb and a crunchy sound that is unapologetically rock and roll. This is not an album to get fussed about lyrics and subject matter. This is a record for bobbing your head and letting your hair fall in your face.

The Dead Weather are not afraid to shift gears within songs, sliding from one groove into another within a single song without ever losing forward momentum or feeling awkward. Sometimes it feels like a jam session, if a jam session were to go absolutely perfectly in every way.

The vocal duties are shared by Mosshart and White, although Mosshart does the majority of the work. Her bluesy raunchy power is exactly what these crunch-fests need to lift their energy. The words themselves are just fragments and emotional snapshots, but matched to all that power they just seem more important. On “I’m Mad” Mosshart snarls “I’m mad” over and over again, throwing in a few derisive laughs here and there for kicks. On “Hustle and Cuss” she hustles and cusses and “licks on the dust.” What does it mean? Who cares, because in the hands of the Dead Weather it feels vital and insightful.

The record isn’t afraid to throw in seventies organ where it is needed, but while the spirit of seventies rock is alive and well, the approach to these compositions is thoroughly modern. The result feels like a clever fusing of new turns and approaches with old forms and chord progressions. It is music that isn’t afraid to take sharp turns at unexpected moments. The effect isn’t jarring, but rather helps create and build the restless energy these songs feed off.

The album is truly collaborative, with most songs having three of the four band members writing them, or at least two. Unexpectedly, the only complaint I had was with the one song written solely by Jack White, “Old Mary.”

“Old Mary” ends the record, and is half rock song, half spoken word. The song is delightfully haunted by organ, but felt a little directionless at times. At the same time, I wouldn’t take it off the record, because its softer, hazier vibe is the right cool down experience after the furious energy of the preceding ten tracks. It’s that last three minutes you take strolling on the treadmill after running hard for the previous fifteen.

“Sea of Cowards” is only 11 songs long and at a mere 35 minutes total playing time, leaving you wishing it were longer, but that is a good thing. It is a project with lofty ambitions that delivers on those ambitions. Four masters of their craft, coming together and redefining the rules of what a classic rock record should sound like.

Best tracks: Blue Blood Blues, Hustle and Cuss, The Difference Between Us, Die by the Drop, I Can’t Hear You

CD Odyssey Disc 263: The Dead Weather

Well I've had an exceptionally stressful day, and it isn't even over yet.

What was not stressful was having this next album in the car the last two days It even had something in common with my previously reviewed Loreena McKennitt album - that one featured a harp made out of someone's bones - in this record they build a whole house out of bones.

Disc 263 is...Horehound

Artist: The Dead Weather

Year of Release: 2009

What’s Up With The Cover?: I believe this is a photo of singer Alison Mosshart looking mysterious in some kind of darkened briar patch. It is a very dark and evocative cover, that suits the music well. I approve!

How I Came To Know It: This band was recommended to me by our friends Sherylyn and Joel as another successful Jack White spinoff. Well done, Sherylyn and Joel.

How It Stacks Up: The Dead Weather only have two albums, and I only have this one. I like this one, and will likely pick up their 2010 release, "Sea of Cowards" at some point down the road.

Rating: 4 stars.

The Dead Weather is one of those supergroups composed of various band members from other successful projects. This has been a fairly common phenomenon in the last few years, and it can turn out very well (like "Them Crooked Vultures") or come off overblown and busy (like "Queens of the Stone Age"). Since The Dead Weather actually features a guy from Queens of the Stone Age, I was a little trepidatious.

Turns out, I had no reason to be. This is a rock record made by people who know what they're doing, and if it is a little overblown, that only adds to its charm. The music is principally a combination of Jack White's riff-driven guitar sound that he did so successfully with the White Stripes and Raconteurs, and Alison Mosshart's lascivious bluesy voice. It is a match made in heaven - making me wonder what took so long?

Apparently Mosshart was in some other band called "The Kills" which I may just have to check out. I love digging backward through musical history (I dig forward naturally just by staying alive year after year).

While I wouldn't call this record a 5 star masterpiece, there aren't any duds, and there are more than a few gems. I particularly like "Hang You From the Heavens" and "Treat Me Like Your Mother" both of which capture the tortured relationships so common to blues music, and then turn the volume to 11.

In particular, "Treat Me Like Your Mother" cranks it up another notch for the twenty-first century. The song focuses around a woman scolding her man for coming home late, with bad excuses on his lips. As the protagonists sings:

C'mon look me in the eye

You want to try to tell a lie?

I bet you can't an dyou know why?

I'm just like your mother.

The song takes the Oedipal complex to a whole other level. I imagine this Oedipus as a drunken lout coming home to a veritable harridan in a dirty shift and a foul temper - as ready to slap him happy as talk to him.

There aren't any kings involved, and no one gets their eyes stabbed out (at least not in the part of the narrative covered by the song) but the song is just as tragic. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus treats his mother as his wife. In "Treat Me Like Your Mother" the character marries a woman who acts like his mother. Then she goes one step creepier, and demands he acknowledge it's true.

Of course, none of this would be possible, without the angry vocal delivery of Mosshart, who stands tallest among the musical giants that make up The Dead Weather.

This album is very new to me, and I'm still discovering its various nuances. I recently commented that it was a bit pretentious (to the above-noted Joel and Sherylyn), but I wholeheartedly retract that statement after my most recent two listens (I've probably listened to it straight through about eight times total to date).

Yes, The Dead Weather ranges all over, and isn't afraid to take chances, but at its core, it is a truthful and honest record made by musicians who clearly care about both the craft, and the history of the music that has come before them.

I think the challenge it faced is that I've mostly played it at low to moderate volumes. This is an angry rock record that is best heard loud. In my car, this was entirely possible, and the results were revelatory. It is designed to be loud, and you can see why once you turn it up.

If you are looking for a carbon copy of the White Stripes this isn't for you. But if you're looking for a whole other direction of Jack White's genius, then climb aboard. This record cuts like a buffalo.

Best tracks: Hang You From the Heavens, I Cut Like a Buffalo, Treat Me Like Your Mother, Bone House,